


Keep Trying to Find

by Tam_Cranver



Series: Escape to Wolf Mountain [2]
Category: Bandom, Mindless Self Indulgence, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Community: bandombigbang, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:58:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 79,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey, Frank, and Gerard are spending a summer away from their town of alien refugees to catch some sun, fun, and music, and they end up finding a lot more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Trying to Find

The excitement was buzzing in the air, so thick it was practically visible, and it felt like something small and squirmy running around under Mikey’s skin.

The excitement wasn’t all his, of course. A hefty chunk of it was coming from Frank, who’d finished packing his stuff _last night_ and now apparently had nothing better to do than sit on Mikey’s bed and poke Gerard while Mikey finished his own packing. It shouldn’t have been that hard, given that the only really Earthling-looking clothes he had were the tee-shirts and jeans Uncle Brian had bought him last month for this trip, but he kept waffling on whether it would get cold enough that he ought to bring a tunic and, if so, whether it looked enough like a sweatshirt that he wouldn’t look like a weirdo.

“Dude,” Frank said, kicking at the foot of Mikey’s bed, “how long does it take to fold your socks or whatever? If I could move shit with my mind, I would’ve packed in, like, ten seconds.” Frank had been digging out his English for the last couple of weeks, and at this point it was tripping off his tongue as easily and quickly as it ever had.

“Well, how long _did_ it take you?” asked Gerard, a little slower and more careful with his words. “Seemed pretty quick to me.”

Frank didn’t say anything, just grinned and flipped Gerard the bird before grabbing a sock from under Mikey’s pillow and tossing it into the open suitcase. “Two points!” he crowed.

“Hey,” Mikey said, picking the sock up mentally and dropping it on the floor. He was still looking for the other sock in the pair. And then, because he was supposed to be practicing talking out loud more, he said, “Did someone get all our sheet music?”

Gerard’s head jerked in what looked more or less like a nod, and he muttered something about having packed his notebooks. Mikey gave him a hard look. One of the downsides of Gerard’s finally learning how to set up a decent mental shield was that Mikey couldn’t always tell what he was thinking or feeling, which was just weird beyond belief. He was pretty sure, though, that Gerard didn’t seem _nearly_ as excited about this trip as he should have been. Mikey didn’t get it. They were going back to _Earth_ , for God’s sake. That meant CDs, magazines, comic books and movies and graphic novels and TV shows they’d never even _heard_ of. God, this was gonna be the best vacation _ever._

Whatever fucked-up thing was going on in Gerard’s head, Frank definitely didn’t seem to share it. “Oh, man,” he said. “How psyched am I about touring with Bob and Ray’s band? Totally psyched, that’s how psyched I am. Maybe we’ll finally find a drummer!” The Black Parade was actually sounding pretty good these days, but besides Tegan and Sara and Uncle Brian, who were too busy with other stuff, nobody on Wolf Mountain was into Earth culture or anything about it enough to learn how to play the drums in a rock band.

“It’s just a vacation,” said Gerard with a sigh. “Even if we met someone who wanted to play with us, what would we do at the end of the summer?”

Frank glared at him. “Don’t piss in my Cheerios, man.” There wasn’t any actual irritation in it, though, and his face cleared as he hopped off Mikey’s bed. “Oh, shit, you know what we should bring? The demo tapes!”

Mikey could have floated them from Frank’s room, or gotten Gerard to, but he figured Frank needed something to do with all his excess energy, so he just said, “Good idea,” and grinned as Frank practically skipped out of the room.

As soon as he was gone, though, Mikey turned to Gerard. _What’s up with you?_

Gerard shrugged, projecting disinterest around his shields. But Mikey’d spent seventeen years in and out of Gerard’s mind, and so he said, _Don’t even try. What the hell are you so pissy about?_

“I’m not. I mean….” He sighed again, more dramatically this time. “It’s not like I don’t want to see Bob and Ray and stuff. But, like…what if those FBI guys come after us again?”

 _They won’t_ , said Mikey. _Uncle Brian mindwiped them, remember? Plus, nobody but Bob and Ray’s gonna know who we used to be, anyway._ Bob and Ray and Uncle Brian had come up with massively detailed plans that Uncle Brian had drilled into their heads a million times. They were going to be Frank, Mikey, and Gerard Way, Bob’s nephews (by marriage, because they didn’t look anything like Bob), who were from a small mountain town out in the sticks. They had Social Security cards and photo IDs and everything—there wasn’t going to be anything to connect them to the Frank Iero and Mikey and Gerard Minnelli who had vanished six years ago. Uncle Brian had made sure of it.

“We know who we used to be,” Gerard muttered.

 _What are you even talking about?_ He sat next to Gerard on the bed, so close their shoulders were almost touching, but it didn’t make the tangled mess of emotions Gerard was putting out any easier to read.

“Just. Maybe this is stupid, but we’re safe here, you know?” Gerard’s face was drawn into a small, worried frown. “We don’t have to hide anything. We have family here. We go back, we’re the freaks nobody talks to, or….” He didn’t have to say "or worse." It had been more than ten years, but Mikey still remembered the faces of the kids in his first grade class, angry and frightened, and how scared he had been when the first rock hit him in the face, breaking his glasses. He remembered the FBI guy who’d held a gun to Frank’s head to make them turn themselves in to the Men in Black. But still….

It was weird. It wasn’t as if he’d ever forgotten that, even with Mama and Frank and Bob and Ray, it had been mostly him and Gerard against the world until they’d found Wolf Mountain. It just didn’t seem to mean what it had before. They weren’t the freaks without a past anymore; they had a place they’d come from and people who cared about them, even if those people didn’t always understand them. They knew who they were, which made them a lot different from the Mikey and Gerard Mama had adopted all those years ago. It was going to be different this time. Better.

He tried to fit all that into images, which was how Gerard processed stuff best, and added, _Plus, we’ll have Bob and Ray. They saved our lives, Gee—if that doesn’t make them family, I don’t know what does. And Frank, Frank’s family. It’s not like we’ll be alone._ He leaned against Gerard and added, _Don’t tell me you’re not excited about seeing movies and eating fast food again. You can’t fool me, I’m psychic._

That got a laugh, just as Frank came barreling in with the box full of their demo attempts. “What’s so funny?” he said, flopping onto the bed so hard that he knocked Mikey into Gerard and Gerard onto the pillow, like a couple of dominos.

“Ah, nothing,” said Gerard, but he was smiling, a real smile, not one of his fakey grimaces, so Mikey thought the situation was probably resolved.

He felt Uncle Brian approach before he heard him say, “Now, do you guys have everything you need? Pajamas, toothbrushes, all that stuff?”

Mikey struggled to sit up. Uncle Brian was leaning in the door, looking distinctly impatient. Frank rolled his eyes hugely and said, “Ask again in the year 3000, when Mikey’s done packing.”

“Get your shit together,” Uncle Brian said to Mikey with a frown. “We’re supposed to meet Bob and Ray in an hour.” He turned his attention to Frank and Gerard and said, “I guess I don’t have to ask if you’re packed, Frank. Gerard, did you get everything?”

Mikey had never been able to figure out how Gerard managed to look so mulish just by jutting his chin forward a little, but he really, really could. “I’m not a _kid_ ,” Gerard said. “I’m twenty years old. I know how to pack.”

“Yeah,” said Uncle Brian tartly, “you’re twenty years old, and I still have to remind you to take a fucking bath every once in a while. You have everything?” Gerard sighed and nodded. Despite the sharpness of the words, underneath Brian wasn’t irritated so much as worried—Mikey could feel it seeping out around the corners of his mental shields, as cold and slimy as the condensation on a glass of water.

Uncle Brian worried about everything, pretty much, but this felt different—this felt like maybe Uncle Brian was actually _scared_ , which wasn’t something Mikey’d ever seen in the six years they’d been reunited with him. _What’s wrong?_ he asked.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Mikey? Talk out loud. And in English.” He stepped into Mikey’s room and nudged the suitcase on the floor with his foot. “Don’t forget to bring plenty of underwear. From what I hear from Bob and Ray, you won’t get a chance to do laundry too often on the road.”

Mikey felt a cold twinge of nerves along the back of his neck. Uncle Brian wasn’t the kind of guy who ducked questions like that, and he _definitely_ wasn’t the kind of guy who put up such strong shields around his family. And then to make them even _stronger_ after Mikey asked him a question—“Uncle Brian,” he said seriously. “What’s wrong?”

They had Frank and Gerard’s attention now, Gerard looking from Mikey to Uncle Brian and back again with an anxious, tense expression and Frank looking somewhere between defiant and crestfallen. Uncle Brian closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his temple with one hand and muttering under his breath before opening his eyes again to say, “Nothing new. I’ve told you from the start, this trip was a risky idea.”

“Oh, come on,” said Frank, frowning. “Those FBI guys don’t remember us, and it’s not like Bob and Ray are gonna give us away.”

“You think those two were the only ones on the lookout for us?” Uncle Brian brought his hand down and started fidgeting with his hands, twining his fingers together and untangling them to tap his fingertips against each other. Mikey was already pretty unsettled, but the nervousness of the motion combined with the smooth, bland perfection of Brian’s shields was downright creepy. “Those alien hunters are pretty much always on the alert, and I’m pretty sure they have files on you. Well, you two at least,” he said with a gesture towards Mikey and Gerard. “Plus…that guy Stump did a pretty good job of fixing the paperwork on the three of you, but the whole thing was still totally sketchy, and I’m pretty sure his boss actually did tell people you got abducted by aliens. The three of you meet anybody who knew you before, and there are gonna be a lot of questions with pretty uncomfortable answers.”

“We’re going on tour,” Gerard offered quietly. “It’s not like we’ll be hanging around waiting for them to grab us.”

“Plus, we’re not even gonna _see_ anyone who knew us before.” Frank said. His hands had curled into fists by his sides “If we get in trouble, I mean, Mikey and Gerard have their mojo, and we can always call you to do another mind-wipe, right?”

Uncle Brian squeezed at the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Jesus Christ, fucking kids.” He looked up and said, “Of course. You guys need me, I’m there. But.....” He paused, and Mikey felt that weird, secretive worry coming from him again. “Look, the FBI’s not the only thing you have to look out for, all right? There are people out there looking for threats. And if they think you pose a threat to them, it’s not gonna matter what you say, they’re gonna do their best to take you out.”

Mikey shuddered with both his fear and Gerard’s, but Frank just looked even more pissed. “This is such bullshit,” he said bitterly. “You go out all the time—we want to go out just _once_ and do normal teenager shit for _one_ summer, and what, you’re gonna try to _scare_ us into backing out?” He was practically yelling now.

Mikey couldn’t blame him. He didn’t have any doubts about how Frank felt about him and Gerard—his friendship was probably the most solid thing in Mikey’s life, besides his brother—but he also knew that Frank felt a little lonely sometimes, the only human in a town full of aliens who spoke another language and had super powers and had no idea what punk rock even was. All three of them had been looking forward to this trip, but Frank most of all had counted on getting away from the colony for a while.

“I’m not trying to scare you into anything,” said Uncle Brian, giving Frank an unimpressed look. “I’m telling you to be careful, all right? You don’t talk about this place, you don’t talk about that shit six years ago—as a matter of fact, you don’t talk about _anything_ that’s gonna make people connect you three with Frank Iero and the Minnelli brothers. You keep to the cover story Bob and I gave you and you _avoid_ attracting attention.” He fixed Gerard and Mikey with a glare and said, “No mental powers, and you keep your shields up. And shield Frank, too. And Mikey, for fuck’s sake, talk out loud.”

“I will, okay?” said Mikey. “Seriously, we’ll be careful.”

“You better.” Uncle Brian wasn’t glaring anymore; he was just looking levelly at them with a solemn look on his face, and Mikey almost thought that was worse. “There’s a lot at stake here, you guys. We travelled a long fucking way to get here, and if people find out about us on Earth, it’s not like we have a lot of places we can go. I’m putting a lot of trust in you, so don’t fucking blow it.”

Frank looked a lot younger than he was as he stared at Uncle Brian with huge eyes. “We won’t,” he said seriously. Gerard and Mikey nodded, Gerard looking somewhat dazed.

“Good,” said Uncle Brian. He blinked, and it was as if he’d wiped some slate in his mind. His solemn expression was replaced by a wry smile, and Mikey couldn’t detect the slightest hint of worry around the smooth expanse of his mental shields. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get Slowpoke here packed in the next half-hour. We’ve got a trip to make.”

**

Ray frowned at the sofa sleeper for what had to be the hundredth time. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s kind of small for three. I mean, if they grew a lot, it’s gonna be pretty cozy. And I mean, we _have_ that inflatable mattress, but it’s pretty gross. You think one of them’ll mind a sleeping bag up front?” Bauer barked as if in answer. If he was answering, Bob thought, it was only because the little fucker was pissed about losing his favorite napping spot on the couch.

Bob himself took some comfort and amusement in Ray’s endless practical worries about the boys’ visit—it took his mind off his own, somewhat grimmer concerns—but really, there was only so much time anyone could spend debating an inflatable mattress. “If they can’t deal with a fucking sleeping bag,” he said, “I can’t imagine that they’re gonna handle touring all that well.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Ray, who still looked unconvinced. “I was thinking we should order pizza tonight. Pizza’s a pretty, uh, Earth kind of food, right?”

“I guess,” said Bob with a shrug. He didn’t even know what kind of food they’d been eating in the alien settlement, but in his experience with teenagers, or anyone, really, it was hard to go wrong with pizza. If, on the other hand, those fuckers at the FBI somehow got wind of a couple of alien kids and their friend coming down to visit for the summer…well, a hell of a lot could go wrong.

“You’re worrying again,” said Ray. “Knock it off.” Bob looked up. Ray’s words might have been exasperated, but his face was understanding, and Bob felt the tiniest bit of the tightness around his chest loosen. Ray was kind of great that way; he never let Bob carry all the weight of his worry alone.

They’d managed to shake the guys for the afternoon and sneak off in their camper—quite a feat, considering Jepha’s sudden preoccupation with finding someplace with a hot tub and Bert’s overwhelming interest in where the hell Bob had picked up three “nephews.” He didn’t know if Schechter had anything to tell him and Ray that they hadn’t already gone over in a few hushed meetings over the last year, but if he did, Bob wasn’t about to run the risk of having that conversation in front of anyone who wasn’t already in on the secret. They were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, somewhere between Wolf Mountain and Sharpston, which was where the tour was kicking off in a couple of days. Bob did his best not to think about the tour. Somehow, the normal excitement of tour plus the added excitement of the boys’ visit equaled a tense lump in his gut that felt an awful lot like fear.

Ray reached out to grasp his hand and ran a thumb comfortingly over his knuckles, and Bob, intensely grateful that Ray was willing to put up with this shit, raised their intertwined fingers to his mouth and kissed the back of Ray’s hand.

“You romantic fucker,” said Ray lightly, but he was smiling, and his eyes were warm. “Hey, you think they’ll bring any alien technology with them? Like a transporter or something?”

It was on the tip of Bob’s tongue to say _They BETTER not_ , but he and Ray had been over this shit a million times, and he recognized an attempt to lighten the mood when he saw one. He sighed dramatically and shook his head. “You only love me for my alien contacts,” he said mournfully.

“Well, that and your taste in YouTube videos,” said Ray with a shrug, still smiling. “But yeah, mostly the alien thing.” Bob smiled back at him, knowing that they both looked like huge dorks but not caring too much. Wasn’t like there was anyone there to see. God, paranoid fears of the FBI aside, Bob had a great fucking life, and every so often, like whenever he was in the same room with Ray, he felt it.

Bunny, who’d been curled up on the sofa sleeper while Ray inspected it and pointedly ignoring both Ray’s rearranging of the pillows and Bauer’s mournful gaze, suddenly perked up. It didn’t strike Bob as too odd at first; Bunny was a smart cat who seemed to notice just about everything that went on around her, and she had a particular fondness for hunting the weird things with a billion legs that always seemed to pop up no matter where they were. But then she let out a loud, almost happy-sounding yowl and bounded outside through the open door of the camper. Dixie, who was sleeping in the corner by the bathroom, lifted her head and gave the room a look of extreme irritation before burying her nose under a front paw and closing her eyes.

“Oh, shit,” said Ray, standing up. “Is that them?”

Bob swallowed; his mouth suddenly felt dry. “Only one way to find out,” he muttered, and he followed Bunny outside.

Sure enough, there they were, four familiar figures looking out of place against the never-ending woods around them.

Schechter looked pretty much the same as he had the last time they’d spoken, short and tattooed and not at all alien-looking, but the three kids with him…obviously the tall one cradling Bunny to his chest with a ridiculously soft expression on his face was Mikey, but he looked _different_. When Bob had last seen him, Mikey’d been about four and a half feet tall; now he was taller than Bob. He’d lost the glasses, too, which made him look weirdly…grown-up. His hair was longer, too, and it hung in his eyes as he smiled at Bunny.

Frank was still a short, short little guy, but he’d put on muscle. He looked solid now, not the kind of kid Bob could pick up with one hand anymore. Clearly the alien community didn’t have any qualms about letting teenagers get tattoos, because Frank was forming quite a collection of them on his arms, and Bob thought about how they’d wanted to form a band when he’d known them, and wondered if they still did.

Gerard…Gerard looked like an _adult_. It was insane. He still had the same round, pale face, but he’d lost some of his baby fat and gained some broadness in his shoulders. Bob thought he even saw a shadow of stubble on Gerard’s chin. It made sense, of course—it’d been six years, and Gerard was only a few years younger now than Bob had been when he’d met the kids. It still felt oddly disorienting, and Bob couldn’t help thinking about it, about all the growing up the boys had done at the alien colony where Bob couldn’t see it.

Some things hadn’t changed, though. Frank met his eyes squarely, and in the space of a moment, he’d managed to launch himself at Bob, throwing his arms around Bob’s neck and grinning wildly. “Dude! Bob!” he exclaimed joyfully. “It’s so good to see you, man!”

“You, too,” Bob grunted. Frank was a lot heavier now than he’d been when he was ten.

Mikey looked up from Bunny to smile broadly at Bob and Ray, and Gerard edged closer, more tentative, with a bright, hopeful expression. “Hi, Bob,” he said. “Um. Long time, no see.”

“Yeah,” said Bob, stifling a laugh at Gerard’s awkwardness. Nope, some things didn’t change.

Before he could detach himself from Frank to draw Gerard into a hug, Frank was pulling his face out of Bob’s shoulder to roll his eyes in Gerard’s direction. “For fuck’s sake, Gee,” he said, and he himself reached out an arm to wrap it around Gerard’s neck and pull him into a kind of group hug.

“Sorry,” Gerard mumbled into Bob’s tee-shirt. “Just. You know. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”

Bob nodded, though honestly it was feeling less weird all the time. He looked over Gerard and Frank’s heads to where Brian Schechter was shaking hands with Ray, who had an arm around Mikey and Bunny.

“Bob,” said Schechter in greeting.

Ray was making a goofy, wide-eyed face over Brian’s head at Bob—he’d been practically pissing himself in excitement about the whole alien thing, although he’d been keeping himself pretty well under control. Bob ignored him and returned Schechter’s greeting, saying, “Hey, Schechter.”

Brian closed his eyes for a minute, and in the space of a few seconds, a small pile of suitcases and backpacks and guitar cases suddenly appeared on the ground in front of Ray and Bob’s camper. Bob tried not to be too surprised by it.

“I’m pretty sure they have everything they need,” Brian said. “I mean, we talked about the secrecy thing….” He looked at Bob for confirmation. Bob nodded; he felt like the importance of keeping this secret had been impressed upon him six years ago by the whole being chased by armed FBI agents thing. Brian nodded back, looking the tiniest bit relieved, and said, “So. Uh, how’ve you been?”

“Not so bad,” Ray said before Bob could answer. “How’s things at the old homestead?”

Brian grinned wryly and said, “Pretty good. Busy, but I think we’ve got a good thing going up there. Not so much by way of entertainment, though. The guys here’ve been pretty, uh.” He waved a vague hand at Gerard and Frank, who’d pulled away from Bob to grab some of their bags, and Mikey, who’d dragged his face out of Bunny’s fur long enough to give Bob one of those weird, intense looks Bob remembered really well from six years ago. “Well, let’s just say they’ve been excited.”

“No shit,” said Frank, swinging a guitar case onto his shoulder. “Hey, dude, you got a new RV!”

Caught off guard, Bob jerked his head around to look at it. He and Ray had traded in Ray’s old Winnebago for a used but seriously classy Bounder four years ago. He hadn’t even thought about it, but, yeah, it would be new to the boys. “Yep,” he said. “This one’s bigger.”

“Sweet,” said Frank, nodding knowledgably. “Do we all get our own bunk this time?”

“There’s a fold-out sofa.” Ray looked suddenly anxious. “You don’t mind sharing, do you? I mean, it’s a full-size, so it’s pretty big, and if you don’t have enough room, we have sleeping bags and stuff….”

Mikey put Bunny down and shrugged. “It’s cool,” he said.

“Plus,” Frank added, “I’m totally used to sharing with these guys.” He flipped Bob the bird and said, “Not like that, you perv,” though Bob hadn’t said anything. “Sometimes we had bad dreams. When we were kids, you know.”

It was kind of sobering to think of what they might have had nightmares about, but Bob kept his voice light as he said, “Way back when, huh?”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Frank, still smiling. “You’re as bad as Uncle Brian.”

“Sounds like my cue to take off.” Brian fixed the kids with a stern look and said, “You guys. Behave. If we end up having to find a whole new planet to live on because of you idiots, believe you me, I will make you regret it.” He looked over at Bob and said, “If you need me for anything, have the boys contact the Refugee Search office, and Tegan or Sara’ll get me.”

“Will do,” said Bob, hoping for the love of God it didn’t come to that. “I don’t suppose any of you have some kind of premonition about whether I’m gonna need to or not, do you?”

Mikey shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I’ve had some dreams, but I always forget them. I think it’ll be okay, though.” He looked pretty relaxed, which Bob thought was probably a good sign.

Brian made a face, though. “My Magic 8 Ball’s a bit cloudy at the moment.”

“What the hell’s that mean?” Bob demanded. Whether or not the FBI would be coming down on them like the hand of God was kind of something he wanted to know with a little certainty.

“It means that if I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” He shrugged. “Telling the future’s not as easy as it seems to you guys. Time’s a complicated thing.” He closed his eyes and sighed, and it hit Bob again that this guy—and Gerard and Mikey—actually came from some mysterious far-off planet where people actually devoted a lot of time and effort to psychically predicting the future. The thought made him uncomfortable, so Bob pushed it to one side. Mikey was staring at him again.

“We got it under control,” said Frank confidently. “Dude, don’t even worry.”

Brian snorted. “Well, all righty then, Frank, if _you_ say so.” But he’d lost that air of weary knowledge, and he was smiling as he said, “C’mere.”

Frank threw himself on Brian with the same abandon as he’d hugged Bob, and Ray laughed as Gerard and Mikey awkwardly maneuvered themselves into the hug. Bob couldn’t help but smile, too, despite his renewed worry. Whatever—maybe Frank was right. They’d been planning this for a year, and unless something really fucked-up happened, there was no reason it had to end in tragedy.

The impromptu group hug broke apart, and Brian cleared his throat, looking a little choked-up. When he spoke to Bob, though, his voice was perfectly clear. “Well,” he said, “I guess you can take it from here. Seriously, though, don’t let Gerard and Mikey fuck around too much with telekinesis or whatever.” Bob nodded, though he wasn’t honestly sure how he could stop them if they decided they really wanted to float shit around with their minds. It had taken him years to get to the point where he could stop Bert and Quinn from pissing in his shoes.

To the boys Brian said, “I’m not kidding. It’s gonna be weird, but as far as I can tell, Earth kids get along fine without any of that stuff.”

“We _know_ , Uncle Brian,” said Gerard long-sufferingly. Frank rolled his eyes, and Brian huffed out a laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “Have a good time, and be careful. If you need me, just call.” And without further ado—but with a burst of bright white light—he vanished into thin air.

“God, that’s so cool,” Ray said, looking completely bowled over. “How much easier would our lives be if we could just teleport everywhere?”

Mikey made a face. “Eh. It’s okay, but it makes my head hurt whenever he does it.”

Ray gave Mikey an incredulous look. “Not an easy guy to impress, huh?”

“I dunno,” said Mikey with a shrug. “I don’t think I’m that _hard_ to impress. Just, he does that all the time. I’m kind of more excited about Earth stuff right now.”

Before Ray could explode into a rant of outraged nerdhood, Frank said, “Fuck, yeah, let’s get this show on the road! Who’s gonna be on this tour? Is there a concert tonight? Come on!” He bounced up and down on the heels of his feet impatiently. “Are we gonna hang out in the middle of the fucking woods all day? ‘Cause I could see that at home.”

Now they were in territory Bob was a lot more comfortable with than alien transportation, and he said, “Tour kicks off day after tomorrow, which gives you time to hang out in town for a couple of days.”

“Yeah?” Frank said eagerly. “What’s there?”

Bob turned to Ray, who’d actually gotten really into the whole tour guide thing. Recovered from his earlier shock, Ray seemed genuinely excited when he said, “Oh, man, lots of stuff. I went online, and there’s three used record shops in Sharpston—one of them’s supposed to be really awesome, too, so we should totally check it out. Um, I printed out the movie listings, if you want to go see something. There’s a comic book store downtown, too, and, I mean, I don’t know if you’d be into it or anything, but there’s an art gallery having a show, too.”

Gerard, who’d just looked kind of anxious and withdrawn since greeting Bob, actually perked up at that. “What kind of art?”

“Umm….” Ray dug through his pockets, unearthing a wad of receipts, the business card of a guy who did publicity from one of the venues, and a wrinkled, sweaty baseball card Bob had found on the floor at a movie theater and given to him, but nothing that came close to answering Gerard’s question. “Shoot. I took a brochure when I walked by there, earlier. It’s right next to one of the record stores.” He wrinkled his nose and squinted into the woods as if information about the art show was written on a tree back there. “I think, like. Modern art? I don’t really know, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said Gerard with a shrug.

“You know how we could find that kind of shit out?” asked Frank. “We could actually get in this rockin’ RV and _go_ somewhere.”

“Chill. You’ve been here, like, ten minutes,” Bob said, but honestly, he wasn’t opposed to getting in the Bounder, either. It was already hot and sticky, though it wasn’t even noon yet, and Bob couldn’t shake the feeling that the bugs hovering around were biting his arms and legs every time he stopped moving. He was pretty much ready to return to civilization.

“We could go,” Mikey said. “I mean, we could go and meet your band and stuff, and decide where else we wanted to go later.”

So the boys (and Bunny, who seemed determined to stay within a foot of Mikey at all times) crowded into the camper and piled onto the booth around the kitchen table. Bob turned to Ray and said, “You mind if I sit back here?”

Ray rolled his eyes, but his smile was warm. “Go for it,” he said, and went up to the front to drive.

Bob settled in carefully at the table as Ray started the engines. “So,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

“Awesome,” Frank said. “Oh, man, Bob, the Amaltheans are so cool. Like, I decided I wanted to be done with school this year, so Neil—that’s our teacher, Neil—asked me a bunch of questions, and at the end, he was pretty much like, ‘Yeah, you’re good to go.’ Degrees and shit aren’t important, you know?”

Bob wondered what school was like at the settlement, and whether they just had some enlightened system where kids could quit when they’d learned what they needed to or whether they just needed the labor to build stores or whatever—whether they even had stores, or it was like a commune or something—all the kinds of questions Ray had been pondering. What he actually said was, “Amaltheans?”

“That’s our planet. Amalthea,” Gerard said. “I mean. Some of the people at the Republic—that’s our town—are from other planets in the Amalthean empire, but since those planets were originally settled by people from Amalthea, it’s kind of easier to just say that than name every single planet, you know?”

“Sure,” said Bob, feeling a little like he did when a big news story came out of a country he’d barely heard of. “So. The people nice up there?” He pretty much intended to avoid the specifics of their family; according to Schechter, their grandma had died almost two years ago. They’d been crushed, which was part of why Brian had arranged the trip to Earth in the first place.

Frank nodded his head enthusiastically. “Totally! Except for a couple of douches we went to school with. But there are assholes everywhere, right?”

That was pretty much Bob’s experience. Bauer barked from under the table, and Mikey peered curiously at him. “Hi,” he said, not in the way that humans generally talked to tiny adorable dogs, but in the way they greeted people. He clearly hadn’t lost his touch with animals.

“That’s Bauer,” said Ray from the front. “I bet he told you that already though, didn’t he?”

Mikey nodded, not taking his eyes off Bauer. Bunny meowed unhappily from her position next to Mikey, and he scratched behind her ears with a conciliatory expression.

“God,” said Frank, “that’s the littlest dog _ever_.” He reached down to scoop Bauer into his lap. Bauer barked happily and licked at Frank’s hands, and Bunny and Mikey shared a deeply smug look.

“They have dogs and stuff at, uh, the Republic?” Bob asked.

“Well, I mean, there’s wild dogs. Wolves and stuff. It’s Wolf Mountain, right?” Gerard said. “But we don’t have pets. I mean, I don’t think we have a concept of ‘pet’ anyway, because if you can talk to animals--‘cause that’s not just a Mikey thing, I mean, I can’t do it, but a lot of people can—but anyway, it makes it weird to talk about animals like something you can own or whatever, right? Back home, on Amalthea I mean, there’s farm animals and stuff, but it’s kind of like a mutual agreement, I think. I don’t know. I really don’t remember Amalthea, like, at all.” He gave Bunny and Mikey a dubious look and scooted closer to Bob. “But. Okay, so we have a band, right? And we brought our demos and stuff. So. I mean, you guys listen to a lot of music and pretty much know your shit, so we were kind of wondering….” He squirmed.

“So what you’re saying is, you want the benefits of our wisdom, huh?” asked Bob.

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Gerard gave Bob a hopeful little smile.

“Oh, shit, yeah!” called Ray from the front. If there was one thing that got Ray more excited than the prospect of spending the summer with a couple of aliens, it was the prospect of getting to offer his opinions on music to a band who might conceivably need his help.

“Kickass,” said Frank, sounding supremely satisfied. Then his eye caught on something across the camper and he said, “Oh, man, you guys have a TV. It’s been _years_ since I watched TV.”

He sounded so wistful that Bob had to laugh. “We don’t really get cable,” he said, “but we have a ton of DVDs, if you want to watch something.”

“They’re in the cupboard above the TV,” Ray added, and Frank sprang from his seat, putting Bauer back under the table and opening the cupboard to stare in awe at Ray’s neatly arranged seasons of The Gilmore Girls and 24 and Bob’s collection of movies and British comedy.

He turned back toward the table and said, “What do you guys want to watch?”

Gerard shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever you want. I think I’m gonna draw.”

“Mystery girl again, huh?” Before Bob could ask what Frank meant, he said, “How ‘bout you, Mikey?”

“Lemme see what we have,” said Mikey, carrying Bunny over to look at the DVDs. After a few minutes of discussion, they settled on one of the old seasons of The Office and sat down on the floor in front of the TV to watch.

Bob had seen this particular season, oh, seven million times or so, so he divided his attention between the TV and Gerard, who’d dug a pad of paper out of his backpack and was peering at it with a thoughtful frown.

Bob leaned over to look at the drawing. It was a pencil sketch; he’d started coloring in parts of it, but it was still mostly gray outlines. Still, it was clearly Lyn-Z from Mindless Self Indulgence, mid-backbend as she fingered a bass chord. “Hey,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard over Michael Scott’s monologue without bothering Mikey and Frank, “That’s really good.”

Gerard looked up, beaming. “You think?” he asked. At Bob’s nod, he said, “I don’t know where she came from. I just woke up a couple days ago and had to draw her. I dunno, maybe she’s someone we’re going to meet.”

Weird. Bob hadn’t even known about this whole ‘draw the future’ thing. He was about to explain who Lyn-Z was, and that Gerard likely would meet her once the tour started, but right about then, Frank spilled a can of Coke on the floor, splashing Mikey in the process.

“Gross, Frank,” said Mikey sourly. “I’m all sticky now.” Bunny looked significantly happier, sniffing at eagerly at the Coke.

Gerard closed his sketchbook and stood up with an anxious expression on his face. “Sorry. I should have caught that.”

“No worries,” Bob said. “Ray, did you buy more paper towels?”

“Yeah, they’re under the sink.”

To Gerard, Bob said, “Seriously, you guys aren’t supposed to be doing your alien thing, anyway. Not your fault.” He got out the paper towels and made Frank help him soak up most of the excess Coke. By the time the mess was cleaned up, they’d reached the parking lot where the Used’s bus and all the rest of the techs were parked, which pretty much ended any opportunity for quiet conversation.

Whatever. They’d have time. They had all summer.

**

It wasn’t like Gerard wasn’t excited about catching up on all the Earth stuff he’d missed, and meeting rock stars and everything, because he seriously was. He spent, like, three-quarters of the money Uncle Brian had given him for the summer at the comic book store the first morning, and he kind of felt like dying when Bob and Ray introduced him and Mikey and Frank to their band, but in a good way.

But the thing was, they all _fit_ , which made everything a little painful, too. It was hard for him to explain, even to Mikey. Maybe that’s because Gerard didn’t always get it himself, but that didn’t stop it from being painful and disorienting at times. Bert was kind of goofy and smelly, like Gerard, but that was okay for him, because he was an honest-to-God _rock star_. The same with the rest of the band—they had something they did, something people actually liked. There was a place for them, and okay, maybe it was only on MTV or with a bunch of screaming, sweaty kids, but it was still a place. Same with Bob and Ray. It was even the same with the kids he’d gone to school with at the Republic, who’d been raised in the colony and didn’t really give a shit about Earthlings for the most part.

But Gerard and Mikey and even Frank were different, mixed-up, not really aliens and not really American Earth kids either. Gerard knew it had to bother Mikey and Frank sometimes, too, he could _feel_ it, but it wasn’t the same. Maybe they were just better at enjoying the stuff around them instead of constantly wanting what they couldn’t have and missing what they used to have.

 _No._ He shoved down the familiar twinge of melancholy. It wasn’t going to do any good thinking about Grandma now. Mikey’d said once that it was like having a wound that never really went away, you just forgot about it until someone hit you there and it hurt. Usually Gerard was the one who put stuff into words, but in this particular instance he thought Mikey’d done a better job than he could.

He did his best to cover it all up from Mikey and Frank, who were having an awesome time. Gerard had to admit, that morning they’d spent in the comic book store was pretty fucking great, as soon as he’d forgotten about the other people in the store. And Mikey’d actually offered, of his own accord, to go with him to the art gallery the second morning. Which, okay, probably meant he wasn’t doing as good a job as he’d meant to in keeping his moping under wraps, but whatever.

It was just going to be the two of them. Ray and Bob had to start setting up stuff for the concert that night, and Frank’s view on the matter was, “Um, you know I love you, dude, but that CD store down the block’s calling my name.”

Mikey sighed wistfully, but when Gerard told him he could go with Frank if he wanted, Mikey just said, _And miss all the art? No way. Maybe after._ Mikey was an awesome brother.

All three of them walked downtown together. It was weird, to see so many people around. Sharpston wasn’t exactly a metropolis, but it was a hell of a lot bigger than the town on Wolf Mountain, and as far as Gerard knew, the people around here weren’t psychic, so it was a lot louder. Gerard wasn’t even the telepathic one, and even he was a little overwhelmed by the presence of many minds worrying and grumbling and thinking to themselves. He wondered how Mikey could even deal with it.

 _Mental shields, dumbass_ , Mikey said.

Right. “I knew that,” he said aloud, and he tried to focus on imagining an invisible wall between him and the crowd of strangers.

Frank laughed. “Yeah, this no-powers thing is gonna go great, huh?”

Ray had been right—the CD store and the art gallery really were right next to each other, on a kind of pretty side street with flowering trees. “Oh, man,” Frank groaned happily. “Check it out.” The music store—it was called “Questlove Music,” which Gerard thought was a kind of cool name—had what was kind of the most awesome front window display Gerard had ever seen. There was a cardboard cutout of Prince on one side and one of Jimi Hendrix on the other, with a beautiful red and white Gibson electric guitar in the middle, set up so it looked like Hendrix and Prince were fighting over the guitar. The window was bordered in alternating record cases and posters, and in one corner was a sign: “SALE, 20% off all CDs.”

“See you guys,” Frank said, dashing off. Gerard couldn’t blame him; after the gallery, he was definitely checking the store out, too. He suddenly felt like a jerk, dragging his brother along when art was mostly his thing and Mikey’d probably be bored out of his mind.

Mikey rolled his eyes, but when he said, _Come on_ , he didn’t sound pissed or anything.

The show didn’t seem to have much of a theme, but that didn’t stop Gerard from trying to come up with something that connected them all in his mind. It was a little like looking at a menu in a restaurant when you were super hungry—he couldn’t decide what he liked best, and he wanted to look at everything at once. There was an abstract painting that looked like the inside of Gerard’s eyelids when he was looking up through the trees on a sunny day with his eyes closed. Hanging around a Warhol-style portrait of Meryl Streep, there was a set of little photo collages with pictures of actresses from movies and lines of poetry, which of course Gerard had to stop and read. The lines didn’t seem to have anything to do with the pictures, but they left a kind of shiver in his gut and made him look at the pictures in a different light. Someone had built a sculpture of a skeleton out of silverware and bits of aluminum cans. Even Mikey, who’d been emitting a more-or-less constant wave of vague and mild interest throughout the whole gallery, had to stop and stare at that one.

 _You should make stuff like that_ , he said to Gerard as they wandered off. Gerard flicked his arm—it was going to sound weird if he started talking when Mikey hadn’t said anything out loud. Mikey sighed and added, “Seriously, I’d help you find junk to make it with if you wanted.”

It was a cool idea, but Gerard had never really sculpted anything before. “I’ll think about it,” he said. And then, “Oh, man, Mikey, look at that!” The painting at the far end of the gallery had caught his eye.

It was a picture of two girls—or, well, he _thought_ they were girls—curled into each other, their faces twisted with sadness. Despite the dark shadows and wrinkles and the pinched quality of the girls’ features, the painting itself had an air of hope that Gerard couldn’t quite define. He thought part of it came from the colors, from the halo of off-whites and light blues around the girls’ heads and the warm colors of their clothes. It was fucking _awesome_.

 _I guess it’s pretty cool_ , said Mikey, but Gerard could already feel his mind wandering.

“Pretty cool? Mikey, are you fucking kidding me?” He gestured expansively at the painting. “Look at the shadows of that girl’s hair—you know, it’s not overdone, kind of subtle, but it makes her look sad, see? And look how the splotches here are kind of on this other girl’s forehead—it’s like, I don’t know, she’s blending into the wall, or the wall’s casting light on her—and look at their faces!”

 _Keep your hair on, Gee. I like it._ He wasn’t even looking at the picture, though. He was looking at someone behind Gerard, and Gerard turned to look.

It was a girl, about his age and downright lovely. He couldn’t think of a better word for her. She had shiny dark hair and a pretty, slender, vaguely familiar face, but more than that, there was something _interesting_ about her. Her hair was pulled back away from her face in a practical sort of style, and she had big plastic-rimmed glasses, but she had bold, brightly-colored tattoos over her arms, and her tee-shirt had a picture of a bleeding heart—like, an actual, anatomically correct bleeding heart—on it. The combination was just so awesome that Gerard had to take it all in for a moment before returning his attention to the painting and his little brother. “Dude, Mikey, the colors!” He frowned at the little card under the painting. “Okay, the artist’s name is Lindsey Ballato. You think she has any other paintings here? I feel like I would’ve noticed if we’d seen one already, but we haven’t even been to the third floor yet, and--”

“Jesus, Gerard,” Mikey said out loud, shooting a sideways look at the girl for no apparent reason. “We’ve been here an hour already. Tell you what, I’m gonna go hang out with Frank at the music store. Why don’t you meet up with us when you’re done?”

Gerard was a little disappointed that Mikey didn’t want to explore the rest of the gallery with him, but then, it had been six years since Mikey’d gotten to go to a music store, so he nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll try not to be too long.”

Mikey made a skeptical noise and loped off towards the door, leaving Gerard in front of the awesome picture. He sighed and leaned in closer. At least with Mikey gone, he could take his time in studying the girls’ faces.

“You like this one, huh?”

Gerard jerked up to see the lovely girl smiling at him. He caught his breath and gave her a tentative smile back. “Yeah. Look at the faces—they’re so little and sad, but the picture’s not sad, right? It’s cool.”

“No, you’re right,” said the girl, standing back and looking at the picture with a thoughtful expression. “It’s not really sad. I think it’s the colors.”

Gerard could feel himself beaming hugely. There was amusement coming from the girl, but it wasn’t mean or anything, and it was awesome to find someone who actually got what he’d been thinking about the painting without being psychic. Not that Mikey’d seemed to get what he’d been talking about, either, which made it even cooler that this girl did. “Totally,” he said. “They’re kind of subtle, but really…I dunno, expressive.” The girl smiled again, and he felt himself flush. “That sounded really stupid,” he mumbled. “I just kind of meant, they’re not real bold colors, but they make the whole painting a lot brighter, you know?”

“No, I got what you meant,” said the girl. She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lindsey.”

“Gerard,” he said, shaking her hand. Then a thought occurred to him, and he looked over at the card under the painting again, then back at the girl. “Um. Are you the Lindsey who….”

She grinned. “Yeah. Sorry to sneak-attack you like that. I just kind of like to go around and see what people really think about it before they figure out that I made it. Get their honest opinions. Does that make me sound totally creepy and pretentious?”

He shook his head. He was a little embarrassed, but it was hard to be pissed knowing that the awesome artist and the awesome girl were the same person, and she was still talking to him. “No way,” he said. “If I had a painting in here, I’d totally do the same thing.” He thought he’d leave out the part where he’d drag Mikey in with him to tell him what people were really thinking.

“You paint?” the girl—Lindsey—asked, sounding friendly and genuinely curious.

Gerard shrugged. “I mean, not good enough to hang my pictures in galleries or anything, but yeah. I draw a lot.”

“Well, you know, getting in a gallery isn’t just about being good,” Lindsey said sincerely. “Obviously, someone has to think you’re good enough to hang in their building, but sometimes you have to go to them, or maybe you know someone who knows someone who sells art or something. I think part of it’s being able to sell yourself, you know? If you even want to display your stuff, I mean, ‘cause some people don’t.”

Gerard let himself think about it for a minute, about actually having his paintings up in galleries and going around to ask what people thought, before he let reality sink in. It wasn’t even like he was staying here, and even if he were, it didn’t mean he’d be able to get his art on display. Even if he were good enough, it’d probably attract the FBI or something. He sighed and said, “Yeah, uh. It’s kind of private, you know.”

“Sure,” Lindsey said, nodding agreeably. “Hey, you from around here?”

“No,” he said, and the extent to which that was true made him giggle. She gave him a confused smile, and he swallowed his amusement. “Um, I’m on vacation. Visiting my uncles.”

Lindsey nodded again and said, “Oh, right. Well, are you having a fun vacation?”

It had gotten, like, seventy times more fun in the last five minutes, but he couldn’t exactly say that to her without sounding like a creep, so he said, “Sure. My uncles are, like, roadies for a band, so we’re gonna get to go to a bunch of concerts and stuff.” For the life of him, he didn’t know where he got the courage, but he managed to say, “Um, there’s one tonight, actually. I don’t know if you’ve got any plans or anything, but if you want, my uncles could probably get you in to see it. I don’t know any of the bands that are playing, but, you know, it could be fun.”

“I’d like to, but I have to work tonight,” said Lindsey, who looked like she was struggling to suppress a smile and kind of failing.

Whatever, thought Gerard. He hadn’t thought she’d actually say yes, so it was cool that he’d at least had the guts to ask. “Oh, okay. That’s cool.”

Lindsey’s smile got a little smaller and less amused, a little warmer. “Have a good time, though,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.” He felt squirmy and uncomfortable inside for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Um. So, I better go. My brother’s probably waiting for me. It was really nice to meet you, though. And I really like your painting.”

She grinned at that. “Thanks. It was nice meeting you, too.” She gave him a little wave, and Gerard wondered if it was possible to simultaneously explode from happiness at how awesome someone was and implode because you were way, way, too dweeby to be able to talk to them or anything.

“Um. Okay, bye, then,” he said, hurrying past her and focusing really hard on his mental shields. Keeping other people’s thoughts wasn’t generally a huge problem for him, but if Lindsey was thinking about what a huge loser he was, Gerard really, _really_ didn’t want to know.

**

Frank pretty much had to stop himself from crying with joy at the sight of thousands upon thousands of CDs and records arranged in a maze of racks inside Questlove Music. He loved the people on Wolf Mountain—he really did, they’d taken him in without questioning it and treated him just like they’d treat any Amalthean kid, even though he didn’t have super powers—but their idea of music mostly sounded bizarre and boring to him, and punk rock just sounded like noise to them. He and Mikey and Gerard had been practically living off Mikey’s iPod, and he’d known every single one of the 5,242 songs on it after the first two years. He was _dying_ for some new tunes.

“Hi,” said a voice from his right, and he turned. The girl at the counter was giving him a vaguely amused look, and he realized he’d just been standing in the doorway like a complete idiot.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly.

“Feel free to actually look at the rest of the store,” she said. “20% off all CDs.” Looking bored, she picked up a magazine from the counter and started flipping through it. There was a band Frank didn’t recognize on the cover.

“Okay, thanks,” said Frank, though it looked like she was pretty much done talking to him. He stood there for a moment longer to look at her. She had bleached blonde hair and a lot of freckles on her nose, and she was wearing a Bon Jovi shirt just like one Frank had had when he was eight or nine. Something about her looked really familiar, which didn’t make much sense, seeing as how the majority of people he knew were back on the mountain. Since “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” was just about the cheesiest thing he could possibly say, Frank decided to forget about it and check out the new release aisle. That was what he’d come there for, anyway.

He read the backs of about a dozen CDs, marveling at all the bands he’d never heard of who were apparently super big now. It was a little hard to concentrate on the music, though. He had the weird feeling he was being watched. He wasn’t Mikey, he didn’t have detailed feelings about the future and stuff, but he definitely got a kind of funny prickly feeling on the back of his neck. He turned around to see the girl behind the counter hurriedly put her head back down to bury her nose in the magazine.

Weird. He could think of two possibilities: either she thought he was shoplifting CDs, or she thought he was cute. If it was the first one, and he kept on browsing in a law-abiding fashion, she’d probably leave him alone. If it was the second…well, the girl was kind of pretty, and _seriously_ familiar, but it wasn’t like Frank was going to be in town long enough to actually start anything. He turned his attention to the CDs again and tried to put the girl out of his mind.

But then, like, five minutes later, he was checking out the Rolling Stones posters on the wall when, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the girl looking at him again. He turned his head to meet her eye, and she put the magazine up in front of her face again.

Oh, what the fuck ever. He walked over to the counter, put on his best polite smile, and said, “Hey.”

She put the magazine down and looked at him like she was trying to figure him out. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry to stare, but…you look really familiar.” Before Frank had time to bask in his vindication, she said, “That totally sounds like a line. Sorry. Are you…Frank? Frank Iero?”

Shit, he was supposed to be incognito. He was about to open his mouth to deny it, to say that he’d never met her before, but then it hit him. “ _Jamia_?” Even Uncle Brian couldn’t have blamed him, not if he’d known how Frank felt at that moment. It wasn’t every day you reunited with a long-lost best friend.

She burst out into a huge white grin. “Holy shit!” She stood up and practically lunged over the counter to hug him. Frank’s face was suddenly buried in her hair and she was squeezing him hard enough to crack a rib or two, but he didn’t mind. “Oh my God, you’re alive!” she said, pulling back to look at him.

That made him laugh. “Well, yeah. Last time I checked.” Now that he knew what to look for, he could recognize her pretty easily. Jesus. The last time he’d seen Jamia, she’d been sniffling and packing up all her stuff into a backpack while her new parents waited downstairs with Spencer and Brendon at the Smith Children’s Home. “How’ve you been?” he said.

“God, how’m I supposed to even answer that?” she said with snorting laugh. “I mean, where do I start?”

“How’d your parents work out?” They’d seemed nice enough, if a little boring, from what Frank could remember.

She grinned. “Great. They’re awesome. They drive me nuts, but not in a bad way, you know?” Frank thought of his own family, such as it was, and nodded. She took a step back and poked him in the shoulder, as if she couldn’t quite believe he was there, and said, “How about you? What are you even doing here? Did the aliens finally let you go?”

Frank knew, he _knew_ she couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t actually know, so it was stupid to be so surprised and a little freaked. Still, he couldn’t help it, and he was pretty sure it showed on his face, because Jamia’s grin faded and she frowned at him with one eyebrow raised. “Frank?” she said. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

Frank tried out a smile. “Duh,” he said, with what had to be the fakest-sounding laugh ever. “I got that, actually.”

She didn’t stop frowning, though. “You sure don’t look like you think it’s a joke.”

“No, I do.” He rolled his eyes, feeling like the worst actor on the planet. “Aliens. Ha. Where’d you get an idea like that?”

She stared at him, giving him that same searching look she had when she was trying to recognize him. Finally, she let out a long, loud breath, blinking slowly and mouthing the word _What?_ to herself. Closing her mouth, she swallowed and then said, “Are you fucking with me? _Aliens?_ ” Her voice rose at the end, and Frank had a mental image of Uncle Brian teleporting down from Wolf Mountain to kill him.

“Could you maybe keep it down?” he muttered under his breath. There didn’t seem to be anyone in earshot at the moment, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t come in and hear, and fuck, he’d just totally given away the fact that the alien thing was true. He fucking sucked at secrecy.

Jamia shut her mouth again. Her eyes were huge. After a long moment, she said, “Christ. I always thought ‘Frank got abducted by aliens’ was a euphemism for ‘Frank blew up a car and got sent to juvenile hall.’”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Frank was startled into a laugh. Only for a moment, though, because he really hadn’t expected anyone would even _know_ where he’d been, much less be spreading the information around. “Who told you that?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

“Brendon,” Jamia said instantly. “When I heard on the radio that you and Gerard and Mikey were missing, I freaked the hell out. My parents had to stay up all night with me for two nights in a row because they couldn’t calm me down enough to actually go to sleep. Spencer called me with that bullshit story about you getting adopted by Gerard and Mikey’s grandma, and then a month later Brendon said you’d sent a postcard from some alien colony or something.”

Shit. Frank had totally forgotten about that postcard. He couldn’t believe Uncle Brian had actually let him send such a dumbass thing in the mail—probably he’d sneaked out to the Refugee Search Office to scribble on a P.S. before Tegan delivered the postcard. And now who knew how many people Brendon and the other guys at the Home had told it to? Frank was such a moron. “Gerard and Mikey’s grandma really did adopt us,” he offered quietly. “That wasn’t bullshit.”

“It’s true, then?” Jamia blinked slowly, like she was barely processing what she was hearing. “Seriously. Are you telling me the Minnellis’ grandmother was seriously an alien?”

“We’re going by ‘Way’ now,” said Frank, managing to inject a little bit of smartass into his tone. More seriously, he added, “Jamia, this is supposed to be a huge secret. Everybody’s gonna kill me if they find out I let it slip, so could you please, please not tell anyone?”

“I’m still kind of stuck on the ‘alien’ thing,” said Jamia, frowning at Frank, but finally she sighed and said, “Come on, nobody’d believe me, anyway.”

Frank thought about Agent Viglione holding a gun to his head six years ago and said, “The scary FBI guys might.”

Jamia gave him a sharp look before nodding slowly. “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “I could see that.” They were silent for a long moment before she said, “Honest, Frank, I won’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t do that.”

If there was one thing Frank had always known about Jamia, it was that she was a genuinely cool person, not the kind who’d freak out and rat out her friend and his family to the Men in Black, so he nodded. “No, I know.”

“Good,” she said. “So, what’s the deal? Do you live on another planet, or what?” Frank wondered if he’d sounded like that when Gerard and Mikey had finally figured out where they were from—totally awed and kind of freaked out, but still managing to keep it together.

“No,” he said. “Just out in the middle of nowhere, in this town they built up on a mountain.” He wondered briefly if he should even be telling her that much about where the settlement was, but hell, how would anyone find it from the description ‘out in the middle of nowhere on a mountain?’ “Not a lot of music stores up there,” he added, hoping to steer the conversation away from the Amaltheans. “I haven’t bought a CD in six years.”

“No shit?” Jamia gestured with one hand towards the shelves of music in the store. “Well, you’ve definitely come to the right place. You still listening to all that pop-punk stuff?”

“I’m not _still_ listening to anything except what’s on Mikey’s iPod,” said Frank. “Seriously, Jamia, I’m dying here. You don’t even want to know how many times I’ve listened to, like, every single song the Smiths ever did.”

“You know, I don’t remember Mikey that well, but somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Well. Lemme give you a rundown: Jamia Nestor’s favorites from the last six years. A magical musical mystery tour.” In a lower voice, she added, “But don’t think you’re off the hook. Before you leave, you and me are going to find someplace less public and catch up.”

“Sure,” Frank said, relieved that at least they weren’t going to have to get into the ins and outs of the Republic right there in the middle of the damn store. Plus, who knew if he’d end up seeing Jamia again—Frank didn’t have to go to the music store tomorrow, he could just leave for the next town in the tour without ever having to tell her about the details of living with Gerard and Mikey’s people.

Actually, that idea wasn’t as comforting as Frank had hoped it might be. He smiled as Jamia led him through the store and pretended that they’d never stopped being friends. It was easier than one might think.

It was thirsty work, talking about every major album from the last six years. After a while, they went downstairs—as it turned out, Questlove Music had a basement, with a shitload of LPs and a vending machine—and got a couple of sodas.

“Jesus,” said Frank, cracking open his Pepsi. “This place is awesome.”

Jamia smiled hugely. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “And Mr. Thompson, the owner, is totally awesome. He knows, like, everything about music, and he goes to a lot of the shows around here, and I think he has a band, too. I get a 15% employee discount _on top_ of the sales, so you better believe I buy a ton of music.”

“I’m so jealous,” said Frank, and he totally was. _His_ summer job was usually weeding the vegetable garden. And then, because Jamia seemed like she’d be interested and why the hell not, he said, “So, like, I’m staying with these guys who tech for the Used, so we’re spending the summer going on tour with them.”

“No shit?” Jamia said, looking vaguely envious herself. “That’s awesome. What are the Used like in person?”

Frank thought about it. In the time he’d known them, Bert had gotten into a wrestling match with Bob that had ended with both Quinn and Bert sitting on Bob’s chest, Jepha had bounced on Bob and Ray’s sofa bed and asked Gerard and Mikey seriously if there was room for one more in there, and then they’d gotten smashed and played Super Smash Brothers with Ray and Frank and Bob and Mikey while Gerard watched and Bert petted Gerard’s hair and laughed loudly at absolutely everything. “They’re cool,” he said finally. “Kinda nuts, but in a fun way.”

“Wow,” said Jamia. She maybe looked a little impressed, Frank thought. “I want to do that, someday,” she said. “Go on tour with a band, I mean. My parents said I could do it in a couple years, after I graduate. I don’t play an instrument or anything, but I’m good at selling stuff, so I could sell tee-shirts or CDs.”

“Gerard and Mikey and I have a band,” Frank said. “Maybe if we ever get our shit together, you could come on tour with us.”

Jamia blinked confusedly. “Wait. Don’t you all live in the middle of nowhere with the aliens? Where were you planning on touring?”

Well, that was the hard part, wasn’t it? It was weird—on the one hand, Wolf Mountain was home, now. It had Uncle Brian and Worm and Tegan and Sara, and the house he’d lived in for the last six years, and gardens Frank had helped grow and buildings he’d helped build. On the other hand, he was still human. It didn’t seem to matter to the Amaltheans, but it mattered to Frank. The Republic was a great place to be if he wanted to spend the rest of his life being the guy with no super powers in a tiny-ass town full of super hero aliens who spent most of their time talking about nature and philosophy and shit. But he didn’t. He wanted to be in a rock band and watch movies and play video games and maybe sometimes talk to people who couldn’t read his mind. He just wasn’t sure if he was ready to strike out on his own, and he didn’t want to make Gerard and Mikey leave the Republic if they didn’t want to. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It’s hard, because we don’t have a drummer.”

“Hmm.” Jamia scratched at her chin thoughtfully. “If you’re looking for a drummer, I know a guy.”

“You do?”

She shrugged. “Sure. You know him, too. You remember Darren Wilson, from the Home? He plays the drums. Greta and Bob have this little folk music thing going—God, you wouldn’t believe how stupid in love those two got when they hit puberty, it’s totally disgusting—but anyway, Darren plays with them sometimes. He’s pretty good. I should get you his number.”

Holy _shit_. He’d talked about finding a drummer this summer, but it had mostly been a pipe dream. If Darren was even sort of good at drums, if he actually liked their music enough to want to play with them….He wondered if he had little cartoon hearts floating over his head, because it sure felt like it. “Jamia, have I ever told you that you’re the coolest girl in the whole world?”

“You have,” she said, “but it’s been way, way too long.” She grinned. Frank could feel himself grinning back, and they just stood there like that for a minute, smiling at each other like idiots.

Upstairs, they could hear the bell over the door ring. The moment was broken, whatever it had been, and Jamia sighed. “I hear work calling,” she said. “You can stay down here if you want, but I gotta go make sure nobody steals anything.”

“What’d be the point of staying down here by myself?” said Frank. “It’s creepy down here.”

Jamia turned to walk up the stairs, but not before Frank had seen a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Well, come on then,” she said with a beckoning gesture. “Let’s go sell shit.”

As it turned out, the customer was Mikey. Frank wasn’t too surprised—art was cool and all, but Mikey’d been dying for new music as long as Frank had. Uncle Brian somehow never seemed to think trips to the music store were a high priority when he went out for supplies.

“Hey, Frank,” Mikey said, staring at a display of Iggy & the Stooges record covers on the wall near the door. Frank couldn’t help being amused, though he was sure he’d looked like that an hour ago.

“Mikey!” Frank said. He gestured towards Jamia, who was peering at Mikey curiously, like she was trying to recognize him. “You’re not gonna believe this, but guess who I ran into?” Because there was pretty much no chance Mikey hadn’t picked it up from his brain, Frank answered his own question: “You probably won’t remember her, but it’s Jamia, from the Smith Home.”

“Hey, Mikey,” Jamia said with a friendly expression.

Mikey turned to look at her. “I remember. Hey, Jamia.” His eyebrows scrunched together in a frown over his forehead, and he switched his gaze to Frank. He raised one eyebrow, while the corner of his mouth turned down, and Frank inwardly winced. Crap. He was really pissed. “Frank,” he said, sounding totally uninterested, “could I maybe talk to you for a second?”

Jamia looked from Frank to Mikey and back again, and said, “Oh, you know what, I totally forgot, I have to inventory this shipment of new releases in the basement. I’ll be back in a sec.” She turned back towards the basement door, giving Mikey one last vaguely concerned look before vanishing down the stairs.

“You _told_ her?” Mikey said in Amalthean, glaring at Frank. Damn, it was a good thing he couldn’t shoot lasers out of his eyes or something, or Frank’s goose would be cooked.

“I didn’t really tell her,” he said, switching to Almalthean, too. “She guessed.”

“She guessed because you told Brendon and Spencer and Jon in that postcard when we were kids,” said Mikey, not looking appeased at all.

Frank couldn’t really argue with that, but hell, he’d been ten years old, and how many ten-year-olds could keep that kind of thing to themselves? “So, what, you’re just going around reading people’s minds now?” he said, changing the subject. “If you’re trying to keep the whole alien thing secret, that’s not exactly the best way to go about it.”

“I didn’t _have_ to read it!” Mikey said, rubbing angrily at his nose. “It couldn’t have been any clearer if she’d had a big red sign over her head that said, ‘Hey, look, an alien!’ What the _fuck_ , Frank, people weren’t even supposed to think we’re the same people we were six years ago, and now she not only knows who you are, but she knows about the Republic, too!”

“She recognized me, okay? We were best friends for _years_. What was I supposed to do, lie to her?” The thought made Frank mad. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t be a totally impassive Man of Mystery, and meeting old friends was supposed to be a _good_ thing—at least, it was when your adopted brothers weren’t aliens. This wasn’t Frank’s fault at all.

The wrinkle between Mikey’s eyes smoothed slightly, and he said, “I guess not.” He looked down at his sneakers and said, “I’m not good at the whole, um, not-reading-minds thing.”

It seemed like a total non sequitur, but Frank had known Mikey long enough to know that it meant, “Sorry. I suck at keeping this secret, too.” Frank felt his anger melt away, and he said, “She won’t tell, Mikey. Honestly, she’s really cool.”

“Yeah,” said Mikey, nodding. “She always seemed nice.”

And maybe this wasn’t going to be a bad thing at all, because now maybe Jamia and Gerard and Mikey could get to know each other. They’d never really been best buddies back at the Home, mostly because hanging out with other kids had freaked Gerard and Mikey out and Jamia wasn’t willing to go out of her way to hang out with guys who didn’t want to hang out with her. But now that they were older, Frank could maybe get his favorite people to all like each other.

Jamia poked her head out of the basement. Evidently seeing that Mikey and Frank weren’t killing each other, she walked up with a smile on her face. “Sorry about that. Crisis averted. So, Mikey, how’ve you been? How’s Gerard?”

“Okay,” said Mikey with a small, crooked smile. To Frank, he added, “I left him at the art gallery. He had a huge crush on this girl who had a painting there, so I thought I’d better leave them alone.”

Frank snorted Pepsi out his nose, making Jamia snicker, and said, “You’re kidding!” Amaltheans didn’t really think about sexuality the same way that Earthlings did, but Frank would have put money on Gerard being exclusively into dudes. True, Frank had never seen him date anyone, male or female, at the Republic, but he did kind of seem to have the hots for Bert. Plus, in the brief and murky “before we got too much like brothers to avoid an incest-y vibe but after my balls dropped” period of his adolescence, he and Gerard had done a little experimenting, and Gerard had definitely seemed into it. “I always thought he was gay,” he said, because he knew Mikey wouldn’t take it the wrong way, and Jamia wouldn’t care.

“Well, you know, that’s a very limited view of the wide spectrum of sexuality,” said Mikey primly, sounding so much like Gerard that Frank had to laugh.

“Oh, hey,” he said, because he didn’t want to leave Jamia out, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you—Jamia thinks she can hook us up with a drummer for the Black Parade.”

Mikey transferred his gaze to Jamia. “Really?”

Jamia gave him a little half-shrug. “Sure. I mean, I don’t know if you guys’ styles will match up or anything, not having heard you play, but I can give you his number. He’s a real nice guy.”

“Rad,” said Mikey, nodding slowly.

Frank couldn’t help himself—he slung an arm over Jamia’s shoulders and beamed at her, at Mikey, at the world at large. “Did I or did I not tell you she was cool?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jamia, rolling her eyes. “Are you guys gonna buy some CDs or what? I’m totally gonna lose my commission if you hang out here and don’t buy anything.”

Mikey gave her a confused look. “You get a commission?”

She snorted out a laugh. “No. But seriously, six years on top of a mountain? I’m hooking you dudes up with some music, and you better believe you’re hooking me up with some alien music, too, because I’m not even gonna believe you if you tell me there’s a planet full of people who don’t listen to any music whatsoever.” In a softer voice, she said, “Shit. Sorry. I promise I won’t say anything like that if there’s anyone but us around.”

Mikey smiled, a goofy, crooked Mikey smile, and said, “Okay. Do you wanna come watch the concert tonight with us?” Jamia raised her eyebrows, and Mikey said, “I’m kind of psychic,” as if in answer to a question she hadn’t even asked.

“Ah, so that’s why you never talked,” said Jamia knowledgably, and Mikey’s smile grew.

Frank couldn’t even believe how completely, overwhelmingly happy he was. “You should totally come,” he said. “You could come hang out with Bob and Ray and us backstage beforehand, and we’ll get a great view of the show. And I bet Bob and Ray could totally tell you about how to get a job selling stuff for a band.” He paused. “Unless it’s our band, in which case, you’re already hired.”

“Assuming you get your shit together,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Assuming we get our shit together,” Frank repeated. “Come on, it’ll be awesome.”

Jamia shot a look at the clock. “Well. I get off work at five, so that gives me plenty of time to get over to the park. I better call my parents, though.” She shook her head with a grin. “Fuck! I didn’t even think I was going to get to go to this show.” She looked at Frank, who was still hugging her with one arm, and gave him a noogie. “Who’d have thunk it?” she asked. “A Smith Home reunion, right here at work. This is downright heartwarming.”

Frank knew she was joking, but actually, he agreed.

**

You’d think, Ray thought to himself, that with all the shows he had set up over the last five years or so, the excitement would wear off. But no—it pretty much never got old to think that he had an important part in making sure these shows happened, and to think that as long as he was working, he was pretty much going to get to see a concert every night. Hell, there’d been tours where it felt like his birthday every single day, and even the crappy ones were more exciting than working at the rest stop. The most thrilling thing that ever had happened there was when some criminal was on the loose, and he and James psyched themselves into thinking that the fugitive was taking a leak in the men’s room while they mopped the lobby.

There was definitely something to be said, though, for having those years at the rest stop under his belt. For one, they made him appreciate his current job all the more. He thought some of the kids who were working as techs on this tour could have used a year or two cleaning toilets with him and James.

Kyle was one of the guys working with the guitars for Brand New. Ray didn’t have anything in particular against him, but he had to admit, he didn’t know why a guy who was supposed to be setting up for a kickass live concert would be leaning against a post listening to his iPod, totally ignoring all the work being done around him. Sure, Brand New wasn’t playing first tonight, but still.

“Hey,” Ray called to him, readjusting the awkward weight of Quinn’s amp in his arms. “Hey, Kyle, wanna give me a hand with this?” Kyle showed no signs of having heard him, so he tried again, a little louder. “Dude! Kyle, a little help here, man?” It was hard to keep a grip on the amp with sweaty fingers, and somebody else getting two of the corners would’ve been really fucking nice.

Fortunately, Kyle seemed to hear him this time. He pulled out his earbuds, gave Ray a goofy, vaguely apologetic smile, and walked over to take some of the weight off.

“Hey, thanks, man,” Ray said when they’d gotten the amp more or less in position and had managed to find the cords to hook it up.

“No problem,” said Kyle, who was already reaching into his pocket for the earbuds. Ray was about to suggest that if Kyle stuck around for five minutes to help Ray untangle the cords, they could go get something to eat before the show, but before he could even suggest it, Kyle had turned around and was disappearing backstage to do…whatever the hell that guy did when he wasn’t standing around and getting in the way.

“What the hell?” asked Ray aloud, and Matt, who was screwing around with the amp cords for Jepha’s bass, gave him a wry smile.

“Dude’s not much of a team player,” he offered. Bob grunted in agreement from his place on the drum riser, and Ray resisted the urge to go into one of what Bob called his “old man rants” about kids today.

It was probably just as well he avoided spewing a bunch of invective against the younger generation, because half a minute later, their “nephews” showed up, poking their heads up over the edge of the stage and peering curiously at Ray.

“Hey, free labor!” said Ray, and Frank grinned broadly and levered himself up onto the stage.

“Does that mean you’re gonna let us help?” he said eagerly.

“It’s practically my duty, right? To help an aspiring young band learn the ropes and all that.”

Even Mikey cracked a smile at that, and he and Gerard climbed up the stairs to sit by Ray’s side among the piles of tangled cords. “Wow,” Gerard said. “That’s a lot of cords. Are they all for this one amp?”

“Nope,” said Ray. “There’s another one outside the tech bus. You know where that is?” At Gerard’s nod, he said, “Okay, you and Mikey wanna go get that one and bring it here? Frank, you can stay here and help me find the cord that goes with this one.”

Mikey and Gerard obediently wandered off. Neither of them were big guys, but Ray figured that what with the whole telekinesis thing, they could probably handle an amp between the two of them. If they could use it without causing too much of a stir, anyway. It was actually kind of a big disappointment that Ray wasn’t going to be able to see much of their super powers on tour—he got the need for secrecy and everything, but it was still a bummer.

Frank pulled at the knot of cords with heartening enthusiasm, though, so Ray managed to shake off his irritation at Kyle and his own lingering science fiction nerdery to take a moment to explain what this amp was for and where they were putting it and why.

Frank listened to it all with at least a mild and polite interest, but when Ray was done, he said, “Cool. Hey, Ray, is it okay if I bring a friend to the concert tonight?”

Jesus, Frank worked fast. Ray couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to make a friend in the what, six hours the boys gone out today. But it wasn’t like it was a big deal or anything, so he said, “Sure. Who’s your friend?”

“Hmm,” said Frank, ducking his head and apparently fascinated by a piece of electrical tape on the floor all of a sudden.

“What was that?”

Frank shrugged. “It’s. Okay, so back before Gerard and Mikey and I ran off and met up with you guys, I lived in this group home, right? And my best friend there was this girl named Jamia. And it turns out that she works at the music store, so I thought. You know. We could catch up.”

All of that sounded pretty normal. What wasn’t normal—and honestly, the kid was so outgoing that even after two days with him Ray could tell this was weird—was the way Frank was still picking at the piece of tape and avoiding Ray’s eyes. Crush. That had to be it. Ray was struck with a sudden urge to go, “Aww!” and ruffle Frank’s hair, and really, he saw no particular reason to put a lid on it.

“Ray! Fuck, dude, knock it off,” said Frank, batting Ray’s hand away. “It’s not like _that_ , you douche.” He was sort of flushing a little, though, so, mission accomplished.

Mikey and Gerard reappeared a minute later, apparently putting a lot of concentration and effort into lugging the amp over. Somewhere along the line, they’d managed to pick up Bunny and Bauer—Ray was actually kind of amazed that they were able to avoid tripping over them, but he guessed being able to talk to animals helped with that. Once they’d gotten the amp more or less into the right place, Mikey sighed loudly and bent down to scratch behind Bunny’s ears. “Okay,” he said. “Now what?”

Ray checked his watch. “Well, sound check’s in an hour. After that, you wanna grab something to eat? The concert’s not starting until eight, so we should have time to go grab Chinese or burritos or something.”

“Awesome,” said Frank, springing to his feet. “You need us to do anything else?”

Ray contemplated making them stick around while he tuned Quinn’s guitar, but then again, he had the whole tour to teach them every detail of setting up for a show, so he said, “Nah,” and flapped a hand in their direction. “Shoo.”

The kids dashed off, dog and cat in tow, and Ray went to hook up the amp Gerard and Mikey had brought.

“Where are they off to?”

Ray turned his head around. Bob was standing behind him, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Ray smiled back and said, “Who knows?”

“Well, as long as they stay out of trouble,” said Bob. He shrugged and grinned a little, like it was a joke, but Ray had known Bob enough to recognize when he was worried.

“Hey. They’re not gonna do anything,” he said. He would have added that their concerts hadn’t really attracted many alien-hunting FBI hunters in the past, but that might have sounded weird to Matt, who was still setting up stuff on the other side of the stage, so instead he said, “Frank’s bringing a girl to the show tonight.”

Bob’s eyebrows shot up. “You serious?”

“Apparently she’s a friend of his from back in the day.”

Bob made a vaguely horrified face and said, “Jesus, you don’t think they’ll…I mean, teenagers don’t sleep together on the first date, right?”

Man, that was a kind of scary thought. The RV wasn’t huge, and the walls weren’t super thick. Plus, if Frank and…what was her name, Jamia?...were using the sofa bed, Gerard and Mikey were going to find themselves sexiled. Oh, God, were Ray and Bob going to have to give Frank a safe sex talk? Ray shook that image forcefully from his mind and said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Frank said they were just friends, and we’ll be leaving in a couple of days anyway.”

Bob nodded, not looking terribly reassured, and Ray reached out from his position on the floor to grab his hand. “Relax, man. It’s all gonna work out.” He tried to be as confident as he could about it—mind over matter and all that.

Set-up and soundcheck went without a hitch, and dinner was actually pretty fun. Gerard, who’d been pretty close-mouthed over the last few days, was happy to wax eloquent about the art gallery while everyone else ate their burritos. Now Ray kind of wished he’d gone along with Gerard and Mikey, because he really wanted to see the silverware skeleton sculpture.

“So. What did you and that girl talk about?” Mikey asked casually in a moment when Gerard had paused to take a sip of Coke.

Gerard made a funny squeaky noise and choked on his drink. Bob pounded on his back for a moment before he coughed and said, “I’m okay.” Red-faced, he gave Mikey a dirty look and said, “We talked about art.”

“Ah,” said Mikey wisely. “Art.” Frank smirked.

Dear Lord, thought Ray. Frank, he could see meeting a girl his second day among Earthlings, but Gerard? Shit, were Ray and Bob doomed to spend their summer living in a WB teen drama? He pictured himself as Jonathan Kent on Smallville. Which of course would make Bob Martha. Ha.

“What are you laughing at?” Bob asked, looking quizzically at him.

“Ah, nothing,” said Ray, sharing a grin with Mikey. Having a psychic teenager around had its advantages, not the least of which was that it made sharing an inside joke incredibly easy.

It ended up being a really great concert, too—the crowd was into it, but not completely insane to the point where they were trying to rip off Bert’s clothes, which happened every now and then; there weren’t any major technical difficulties; and perhaps best of all, the guys seemed to be having a really good time. Ray had seen them do a good show completely hung-over, or when Dan had the flu, or when Quinn and Bert were mid-feud, but the best shows were always the ones when the band was having fun.

Frank, who was bouncing around backstage like some kind of head-banging rubber ball, looked like he was just about ready to run out onstage, steal Quinn’s guitar, and engage in some wild guitar-playing shenanigans. Ray would’ve felt bad for Jamia, who’d shown up half an hour before the show and was now getting more or less ignored, but she seemed pretty into it, too. She didn’t do the whole full-body thrashing thing like Frank, but she had a good rhythm going, bouncing up and down on her heels and nodding her head in time to the music.

Gerard and Mikey were staring at the band as if they’d never seen anything more fascinating in their lives. Gerard in particular was studying Bert like he was the epitome of everything Gerard wanted or wanted to be in life. It wasn’t just obvious to Ray; when the set was over, Bert practically skipped offstage and slung an arm around Gerard’s shoulder.

“So,” he said, “how much ass did we kick? Come on, now, be honest.”

“You were awesome,” Gerard said earnestly, not seeming to care at all that Bert was wiping his sweaty hands—hell, his sweaty _self_ —on Gerard’s tee-shirt. “I mean, you sounded, like, I don’t know, totally badass, but it was more than that, it was like….” He flapped a hand inarticulately, and Jepha laughed.

“No, no,” Bert said, “Keep saying nice things about me.”

“Fuck you, dude,” said Quinn, poking Bert in the shoulder. “He’s saying them about all of us, right?”

Gerard turned as red as Ray had ever seen him and mumbled something completely inaudible.

“Dude,” said Dan, “leave the guy alone and let’s get some drinks. I’d fucking kill someone for a Gatorade, you know?”

“There’s a cooler over there,” said Bob, jerking a thumb towards the open, grassy space behind the stage. Bert made an excited noise and detached himself from Gerard, leaving behind dark sweaty streaks over one side of his shirt and along his shoulders.

“Wanna come with?” said Jepha to Mikey, Frank, and Jamia.

“Mm, that’s okay,” said Jamia. “I kind of want to see the next band. But thanks anyway. You guys were great.”

The way Frank was looking at Jamia, Ray sort of thought there should have been little birds flitting around his head and harp music playing, or something. Just friends, his ass. “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna stick around here,” Frank said, and then to Bob and Ray, “Do you guys have to do anything now? You need any help?”

Bob shrugged. “Eh. Teardown’s not that hard, but if you wanna carry shit, I’m not gonna say no.”

“Well, we’re out, then,” said Quinn. “Let’s hook up later, though.” He pointed finger-guns in Mikey’s direction. “I call a rematch—you, me, Ray’s old N64.”

Mikey shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t mind beating you again.”

Quinn hooted out a laugh, and the band vanished into the dark.

Teardown and the subsequent set-up went smoothly. Ray hadn’t gotten the chance to get to know MSI’s techs that well, but he got the impression that they were used to all kinds of crazy shit, so simply moving one band’s stuff off and getting their own stuff set up was no big deal. Ray could relate.

He kind of thought the kids would get a kick out of the MSI show—he’d only ever seen them live on Youtube and during soundcheck, but that was enough to convince him that they had a fun live show. He hadn’t expected, however, that when they went out on stage and started playing, Gerard’s jaw would drop and his eyes would get so big they seemed to be taking over his whole face. He didn’t get it, and he nudged Gerard’s shoulder and whispered, “Hey, what’s up?”

“That’s the girl from--” He turned his head to glare at Mikey, who was looking incredibly smug. “You knew!”

“Shh,” said Mikey with a smirk. “I’m watching the show.”

Ray followed Gerard’s gaze; he seemed to be looking at Lyn-Z, who at the moment was exhibiting some fantastic flexibility, bending back so far she was practically playing her bass upside down. Gerard looked utterly enthralled. Once again, Ray was forced to imagine Bob in a red wig, chiding him about manure or something. Oh, who was he kidding? Bob was probably the Jonathan in this scenario. He sure wore enough flannel.

Mindless Self Indulgence actually made it really hard to spend the whole set recasting Smallville in his head, so Ray made a mental note to himself to ask Gerard and Mikey how dating worked among the aliens and settled down to watch the show.

When it was done, Lyn-Z practically skipped over, grinning hugely. “Hey,” she said to Gerard.

Gerard made some inarticulate sputtering noises.

“Ha! Sorry to keep psyching you out like this,” she said with a less manic, more genuinely sweet smile. “You should see your face right now, though.”

“So when you said you had to work tonight….” He nodded. “I got it, I got it.”

“Gentlemen,” said Jimmy, who had strolled leisurely over with Steve and Kitty. He had some fairly intense hair, even by Ray’s standards. “I’ve outdone myself—I believe I managed to rock my own socks.”

“Consider my socks rocked,” said Kitty.

Steve made a face and stared at his own feet. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “I think you’re gonna have to work a little harder to impress these babies. My socks aren’t that easy.”

“That’s not what they said last night,” countered Jimmy.

“That’s not what your mom said last night.”

Jimmy affected a pose of horror. “You scoundrel! Sullying my sainted mother’s name! Pistols at dawn!” Turning his attention back to the others, he said, “I see Lyn-Z’s art groupie enjoyed himself. Did the rest of you?”

“He’s not my art groupie, asshole,” Lyn-Z said, but she was still smiling.

Frank looked as if he could barely contain himself. “That was bad _ass_! Like, I can’t decide whether it made me want to dance or get into a fistfight.”

Jamia raised an eyebrow at him, but her smile was fond and familiar. To Jimmy, Kitty, and Steve, she said, “Well, it didn’t make me want to get into a fistfight, but I did really like it.”

“It was cool,” said Mikey simply, looking abundantly satisfied.

“Good enough for me,” said Lyn-Z. She smiled brilliantly at Gerard again.

“Oh!” said Gerard as if he’d forgotten something. “It was awesome, I mean, you were….” He was getting intensely red again. “Oh, uh. These are—these are my uncles, Bob and Ray.” He gestured towards them; Ray and Bob had already met the members of MSI, but Ray nodded anyway, to keep Gerard from getting any more embarrassed than he already was. Bob looked like he’d had just about enough of human company, but he managed a nod. “This is my brother, Mikey,” Gerard went on, “and…my other brother, Frank. And his friend Jamia.”

Frank looked vaguely touched, and he reached to shake Lindsey’s hand with a bright smile. “So you’re the girl from the art gallery.”

“I am indeed,” said Lyn-Z. “Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, God,” said Jamia. “Do you have a piece up at the gallery downtown?” At Lyn-Z’s nod, she said, “I work at the CD store next door. I wondered if that was you—the name looked kind of familiar, but I wasn’t sure. It’s a really cool painting.”

“Oh, wow, thanks.” She looked really pleased.

The four of them seemed to be getting along nicely, so Ray turned his attention to Mikey, who was watching the techs for MSI and Brand New set up for Brand New’s set. He had an intense look on his face. “Hey,” said Ray. “You doing okay?”

Mikey blinked owlishly, as if he were just waking up from something. “Yeah. Hey, um, who does the guitars for Brand New? The tech stuff, I mean.”

Just when Ray had managed to forget his irritation at Kyle from earlier. “Um. The dude who does the lead guitar is Kyle, and Alicia does the bass guitar. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason,” said Mikey with a shrug. But he was still watching the stage.

“Hey,” said a soft voice against the back of Ray’s neck. He turned his head. At some point, Bob had managed to maneuver his way around the little knot of kids to stand behind Ray, his face so close he was practically resting his chin on Ray’s shoulder. Ray let himself lean back into Bob, and they watched Brand New. First show of the tour, and if tonight was anything to go by, it was going to be a good one.

As the cheers for the final encore drifted off into the night and the crowd started to disperse, Bob tilted his head towards Ray’s ear again. “I think we’re more or less done for the night,” he murmured. “And the kids seem pretty occupied. You know what I was thinking?”

Ray had a pretty good guess. Bob didn’t make a habit of propositioning him while they were hanging out backstage, but the past couple of weeks, he’d been as stressed as Ray had ever seen him, and the past few days had afforded pretty much no time for privacy. It wasn’t like anyone was listening, anyway; the kids, who’d stopped their chattering long enough to watch Brand New’s set, were talking again; even Mikey seemed to have been drawn into the conversation.“Were you thinking that the RV’s gonna be empty for a while, giving us the opportunity to have a little…quality time?”

“I was, actually.” Bob grinned and grabbed at Ray’s forearm, squeezing gently, and once again, Ray was forced to take a moment to appreciate just how much his life rocked.

**

“You’ve been directed to the Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena. Agent Molko speaking, how may I assist you?” Brian was pleased with how it came out—it sounded almost polite.

“Agent Molko, it’s me.”

Fuck, it was Campbell. Again. Brian was fairly sure at this point that the receptionists at the FBI only put his calls through to torture Brian personally. “Mr. Campell,” he said, “what can I do for you?” He hoped he sounded incredibly discouraging; it really was a pity that Brian had, as of yet, found no way to prosecute Campbell and prevent him from calling every other week with some demented theory or other.

“The aliens. The ones I told you about?”

“Which ones?” At this point, Campbell had called him with half a dozen stories of alien invasion, each one less connected to reality than the one before.

“The ones that look just like people, who can control you with their _minds_.”

Brian sighed. “Ah, yes. Those.”

“Uh-huh! I saw them. They teleported from their mothership to the woods to meet with their agents here—they left _spies_ among us. I think the invasion’s starting—I mean, I know I’ve said that before, but I think it’s really happening this time!”

“Right.” Brian jiggled the mouse on his computer until his game of FreeCell came up. He should have stayed in the UK—sure, their agencies had fewer resources, but they also had fewer cranks calling them. “So, Mr. Campbell, can you describe these, er, invaders for me?”

There was a shifting noise on the other end. “Sure! I wrote it all down, just in case. Their leader was a short guy with spiky hair and a bunch of tattoos. One of their agents called him Brian?”

Brian’s hand stilled. It was probably a coincidence. The world was full of Brians—hell, the Division had another one, Brian Viglione down the hall—and people changed their names all the time, but still, it was worth noting. “All right,” he said calmly, “Short, tattoos, Brian. Can you describe the rest?”

“Yeah, okay. Three of the aliens looked like teenagers. One of them was called Frank, I think, and he was related to the leader, because he called him ‘Uncle Brian.’ And the other two were Mikey and…something with a J. Jared? Gerald?”

This was all sounding very familiar. Brian cast his mind over some of the earliest reports, the ones from before the initial settlement fifteen years ago, and some of the more recent case reports at the Division. “Gerard?” he asked.

“That’s it! That’s it exactly! And the kids were all dressed like Earth kids, but you could tell they weren’t because one of them was trying to tell the future, and the leader told their agents not to let Gerard and Mikey use their telekinesis, to keep their identities secret.”

“ _Really_.” Brian felt a thrill of exhilaration. Perhaps Campbell wasn’t the most reliable of witnesses, but even a stopped clock was right twice a day, and the names…Brian was a common enough name, but a Brian travelling with two teenagers called Gerard and Mikey? Now that was quite a coincidence, indeed. “Where was this, Mr. Campbell?”

“Um….” Brian could hear him mumbling to himself on the other end. “It was. Okay, there’s this forest in Hero County? And, and the mountains are an hour away, and it’s near, um, Molasses Creek? Kinda by Cork Valley?”

The names sounded vaguely familiar—perhaps there’d been some news story to come out of those places, or perhaps someone from the Division had even had a case there. Cocker would know. Of course, it’d be easier to talk to Jarvis if he didn’t have to entertain the crackpot on line two. “Well,” he said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Campell. We’ll be sure to look into it. If there’s nothing else….”

“One of their agents is named Bob, and he lives in an RV,” Campbell said. “Oh, and I think the alien kids play the guitar.”

Brian made a mental note, on the off-chance that knowing that the kids played guitar could somehow prove to be useful, and said, “Thanks so much for your assistance.” God, he was actually getting pretty good at this politeness thing.

He could practically see Campbell nodding frantically on the other end of the phone. “Of course!” he said. “I really think you oughta move on this one pretty quick, ‘cause, like, once they stop abducting us and start trying to infiltrate, that’s like the second stage of the invasion, right?”

“Perhaps,” said Brian coolly. “Thanks again.” He moved to hang up the phone.

“Wait!” Campbell cried. “I just remembered something. One of their spies, Bob. He called the leader Schechter. Um. I think that’s it.”

Brian felt something very like excitement rush through his chest, and he was suddenly very eager to be off the phone, to be out of this office and doing what he did best. “Have a good day, Mr. Campbell,” he said, and hung up before Campbell could change his mind. The man might have been profoundly useful today, but that didn’t mean Brian wanted to spend the rest of his afternoon listening to him go on about anal probes.

He’d scarcely hung the phone up before Jarvis stuck his head around the corner and raised his eyebrows curiously. Jarvis was a bit like the devil that way—even think his name, and he appeared, usually to piss Brian off in one way or another. In this case, however, Brian could forgive his omnipresence.

“That was Campbell,” he said.

“Again?” Jarvis made a disdainful noise in the back of his throat. “Lunatic.” He was a fine one to sneer, Brian thought. Once again, he looked as if he’d pulled his clothes out of a dumpster.

“I think he might be onto something this time,” said Brian. “According to Campbell, a short, spiky-haired man with tattoos called Brian teleported into a forest in Hero County. He had three teenaged boys with him—Mikey, Frank, and Gerard.”

That wiped the sneer off Cocker’s face. His mouth opened slightly and he readjusted his glasses before saying, “I know those names. Those last ones. Didn’t Palmer and Viglione have a case, oh, six years back? Psychic kids?”

“They did.” Leaning back in his chair, Brian smirked up at Jarvis. Oh, how he loved it when he was in the know and Jarvis had to wait to be filled in on details. “You ought to know the first name, too. Brian Schechter? Ring any bells?”

Jarvis’ eyes grew huge. “You’re not serious.”

“As a car crash, as they say.” He kicked his chair away from his desk and stood up. “What say we pay Amanda and Brian a little visit?”

Brian and Jarvis had never had a terribly cordial relationship with Amanda and the other Brian. They were brash and loud in a way that Brian had come to associate with cowboys and cynical cops in crime procedurals—distinctly American and infuriatingly obnoxious. Not, Brian allowed, that he and Jarvis were any less irritating to them. Perhaps it was simply a case of four personalities that were simply too large to conform to each other’s preferences. God knew Brian woke up every other day and wished he could strangle Jarvis, and Palmer and Viglione had nothing like Brian’s own reason for restraining himself.

In keeping with their rather fractious history, Palmer glared when she saw them in her doorway. “Cocker. Molko. The fuck do you want?”

“Ah, Amanda,” said Brian in his breathiest, highest voice, “always so charming.”

Palmer narrowed her eyes, and it was probably just as well that Cocker said, “One of your cases.”

“You want one of our cases?” Viglione said skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

“Fuck you! No,” said Palmer. “These are _our_ cases, and this isn’t third grade show and tell. We take the cases we’re assigned and you take the leftovers.”

“Got a rather high opinion of yourself, haven’t you?” said Jarvis with another sneer. Brian had to hand it to him, the man did a top-rate sneer. Brian himself might have added a “Considering our solve rate’s nearly ten per cent higher than yours and we cost the agency a fuckload less in legal fees,” but then, there was no need to gild the lily. “We don’t want one of your current cases, anyway,” Jarvis went on. “Some names cropped up in one of our cases from a case you two cocked up six years ago, and we want to check the files.”

“Cocked up?” said Viglione with a scowl. “Fuck you, get the hell out.”

“Do you really want to break Beck Campbell’s heart?” asked Brian, fluttering his eyelashes and pulling his mouth down into an exaggerated pout. “This may be the first time his ramblings ever come to anything—do you really want to deny him that?”

Palmer shook her head with a reminiscing smile. “Man. That guy never gives up, does he?”

“No. He doesn’t. So if you could just send me your files on—on those two boys you were hunting, six years ago, the ones Pete Wentz adopted. Gerard and Mikey? You could even CC it to Cocker, if you were feeling particularly generous.”

Viglione winced. “The Minnellis. Fuck. That case. I swear to God, I’m still filling out paperwork on that one.”

“Hell of a lot of trouble for two brats who turned out to be garden-variety psychics,” said Palmer, stretching her legs out in front of her and drumming her fingers on her desk. “What’d we decide on that one? Trauma-induced ESP from the loss of their parents? Some shit like that.”

“Just how did you reach that conclusion?” asked Brian. They didn’t encounter enough psychics on the job, in Brian’s opinion, to call any of them ‘garden-variety,’ and he didn’t recall any reports from that case that would lead him to a trauma-induced ESP classification.

Palmer scowled. “Jesus fuck, Molko. It was six years ago. I don’t remember the whole goddamn investigation.” There was something troubled about her expression, though. Perhaps there was something about the case she felt she ought to have remembered but couldn’t.

“Give us the files, then,” said Jarvis. “No sense in leaving any stone unturned.” He smiled slightly, his eyes mocking, and added, “Unless of course there’s something in there you don’t want us to see. Property damage you didn’t file a liability waiver for? Perhaps a little unauthorized termination?”

“If we terminated _you_ , no jury in the world would convict us,” said Viglione irritably. “Fine.” He rolled his chair back to his desk and shook his mouse, jolting the computer out of its screensaver. Brian watched carefully while he attached files to an e-mail and sent it to Brian and Jarvis. Turning around to look at them again, Viglione said, “There. You happy? I just sent you the files. Now get lost.”

“Thanks very much,” said Brian with a smile. Yes, he was getting pretty good at the whole ‘politeness’ thing. “Oh, wait, though. Before we leave….” He fixed Palmer and Viglione with a stare, watching while they slumped unconscious in their chairs. The only good they were doing him awake was showing him what Brian had already suspected—Schechter had erased their memories of the Minnelli case, carefully replacing it with the unlikely ESP explanation. With them asleep, Jarvis could erase the e-mail from Viglione’s outbox while Brian wiped their memories of the last five minutes. There was no reason to give them any clues that might lead them to the traitors’ settlement if Brian and Jarvis were successful in tracking them down. Although Brian was grateful to the American government for the use of its resources, some matters were none of its affair. This one in particular was under the jurisdiction of the Emperor—as indeed, in the end, all things were.

**

Alicia woke up feeling gross and sweaty and squished against the wall. Kyle was like a big space heater next to her on the bunk—great during the winter, but not so awesome when it was like 90 degrees on the tech bus. Maybe the whole “squashing herself and her boyfriend into one bunk” thing wasn’t such a great idea after all.

She managed to disentangle herself from the sheets and climb over Kyle. He made a vaguely protesting noise and muttered, “What? What time’s it?”

“’s morning,” she said, finally managing to get her feet on the floor and stretch out.

A pair of arms wrapped around her waist from behind, and Kyle groaned into her back. His breath was hot against her skin, and she wriggled out of his grasp. “Too hot, dude,” she said. “Man. I need a shower so fucking bad.” Urgh. Her bag was somewhere on the floor, under the pile of clothes and crap, and somewhere in that bag was her deodorant. If she couldn’t smell clean, maybe she could at least smell like fresh springs or whatever the hell the deodorant was supposed to smell like.

“So,” Kyle said as she dug through the underwear and Spin magazines, “got any exciting plans for today?”

She found the deodorant under her bra, but for some reason, she couldn’t take too much pleasure in the victory. She grabbed it and turned around. “I thought you and I were gonna check out the pool today. It’s supposed to have a slide and everything.”

Kyle winced. Alicia’d never understood why people gritted their teeth—it seemed like kind of a dumbass way to express your anger or whatever, and she’d heard it wore down your enamel—but she was actually finding a fair amount of satisfaction in clenching her jaw. “That’d be awesome, babe,” said Kyle, “but the guys and I were just gonna hang out today.”

Hang out. Right. That pretty much summed up what Kyle and “the guys” did every day. They sat on the floor, strummed their guitars—never actual songs, of course—and talked about their sex lives, such as they were. “Okay. Like, all day?”

Kyle squirmed uncomfortably, perhaps sensing the rays of anger that Alicia was sending out of her brain in his general direction. “Well. I mean, obviously, you’re welcome, too. It’ll be fun.”

Because that’s what she wanted to do on a hot day—spend it on the tech bus with her coworkers in a cloud of pot and B.O. “Oh, for God’s sake, Kyle!” She threw the deodorant on the floor, for lack of anything better to throw. Fuck it, she didn’t need to smell good anyway. She picked up a bra and put it on, staring at the hooks while she fastened them so she didn’t have to look at Kyle giving her the puppy-dog face. “You can’t take two hours off from hanging out to go to the pool? Here’s a wacky idea—we could hang out _at the pool_.”

“Come on, Alicia,” said Kyle irritably. Like _she_ was the one breaking their plan to actually get some one-on-one time this tour. “You can’t go to the pool by yourself?”

Fuck him, she thought. Alicia wasn’t the kind of girl who had to spend every fucking day with her boyfriend, but she didn’t think it was too much to ask for him to spend a couple hours with her after the week he’d spent shitting his pants about being able to hang out with rock stars and spending every free hour doing just that. “I _can_ go to the pool by myself, dickweed,” she said, pulling on a tank top and standing up. “I _wanted_ to go with _you_.” She walked out of the bus and slammed the door.

She made a beeline for the merch table. Fuck, she was so glad Sarah was on this tour with her.

Sarah looked up and made a face at her. “Man trouble?” she asked.

“Tell me,” said Alicia. “Am I the biggest bitch ever for wanting my boyfriend to go to the pool with me?”

“No….” Sarah said with a sigh, folding a tee-shirt.

“Then what the fuck? Okay, I practically, like, got him this job so we could spend the summer together, because he was pissy about me going away for three months. But now we’re _on_ the tour and he’s all vampire Kyle.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Vampire?”

“I only see him at night.” She’d actually spent a bunch of time thinking up that one. And it was stupid, sure, but accurate.

“Oh, man. That’s weak,” said Sarah, rolling her eyes.

Whatever. She wasn’t a comedian. “Seriously, though.” Her anger was deflating a tiny bit, just leaving her a little sad and a little fed up. “It’s like he doesn’t want to do anything with me. I come up with all these things we could do—and you know me, okay, I’m a fun person! But all he wants to do is a, have sex, and b, hang out with the guys. Not actually _do_ anything with the guys, just hang out. Which might be the most boring thing in the world.”

“Yeah?” said Sarah. She reached into the cardboard box at her feet to pull out another tee-shirt.

“Yeah. And it sucks, because we used to do all kinds of stuff together. Sometimes it feels like we don’t even like each other anymore, and I just, I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

Sarah let out a short huff of air and slammed a hand down on the merch table. It was surprisingly loud. “Alicia. You know I love you, right?”

“Me, too.”

“Okay. So then when I say I’m really sick of hearing about this, you’ll know I don’t mean it in a bad way.” Before Alicia could protest, because seriously, what kind of best friend got _bored_ with the breakdown of her friend’s relationship, Sarah held her hand up and said, “Wait. Honey, you want me to say Kyle’s an asshole? Fine. He’s an asshole. I’ve pretty much always thought that, but you didn’t want to hear it, so I shut up. But you come to me with all this crap, day after day, for _weeks_ now. You want my advice? Break up with him. If you don’t want to do that, then can we at least talk about something else for, like, an hour?”

Alicia couldn’t talk at all for a moment, she was so shocked. And then it hit her. Shit. She was one of those girls who only talked about their boyfriends, like they had no fucking lives. She was like one of those girls in school who hung on their boyfriends all through lunch and complained about them to their friends all through class, the ones she made fun of sometimes. Fuck. She tried to think of something, anything else to say. It was hard, considering the amount of time she’d spent thinking about Kyle over the last…millennium. That was pretty depressing in and of itself. Finally, she said, “Okay. So, I was watching a movie marathon on USA last week, and they showed The Faculty.”

“The one where Elijah Wood saves the high school from aliens?” Sarah looked up. She actually sounded vaguely interested, which was encouraging.

“Mm-hmm. And Jon Stewart’s like the chemistry teacher or something. So anyway, USA’s public access, so they cut out all the cussing. So the Josh Hartnett character says, ‘Fuck this shit,’ but it comes out, ‘Flick this spit.’”

Sarah actually laughed at that. “‘Flick this spit.’ That’s awesome.”

“I think you ought to make a tee-shirt that says that,” said Alicia with a smile. It felt really good to smile. “I’d totally wear it.”

“Yeah. And I could have, like, a line drawing of a totally disaffected Josh Hartnett on it. Oh, man, I should be writing this shit down!” Sarah scribbled something on a notepad, ripped off the top sheet, and stuffed it in her pocket. “Hey,” she said, “speaking of tee-shirts, wanna help me fold these?”

“If I help you, will you take me to the pool?” It was still fucking hot.

“Of course,” Sarah said. “You think I bought a new bikini just so it could ride around in the merch bus all summer?”

Alicia was _so_ glad Sarah was doing merch on this tour. “We have a deal.”

“Sweet.” They shared a smile, and then Sarah said, “You wanna run and get the box of larges and extra-larges?”

“Sure thing.” She walked over to the parking lot feeling better than she had all morning. Her good mood deflated a little when she saw that the cardboard box with “L + XL” scribbled on one side was tipped over, spilling tee-shirts all over the floor of the van, but whatever. No big deal.

As she knelt on the floor to pick them up, she saw someone approaching out of the corner of her eye, and she looked up. It was a skinny, vaguely familiar guy—one of Bob and Ray’s nephews, she thought. The taller one, as opposed to the tiny one and the one with the gross hair. Alicia didn’t know Bob and Ray that well, but she kind of thought they were awesome. They knew just about everything about teching, and it was kind of cool to see two dudes who’d not only managed to keep their relationship going on the road _forever_ , but who made pretty much no effort to hide it. Alicia respected them about as much as she respected anyone she’d ever met. But she felt like talking to another teenage boy right now about as much as she felt like having a root canal, so she looked back down at the pile of tee-shirts in hopes that if she ignored him, Bob and Ray’s nephew would go bug them and leave her alone.

It didn’t actually take too long to put the tee-shirts away, but she was still surprised to see the guy there when she stood up to close the box. He was just kind of standing there, staring…well, he was staring at her. And he kept staring as she wrestled with the flaps on the box, trying to tuck them under one another so it would stay closed. He didn’t move at all, and he didn’t have much of an expression on his face, but he was definitely looking at her. Holy shit, how creepy was that? She bent down to pick the box up, hoping against all hope that the guy would go away.

She’d been pissed at the universe a little lately, but to its credit, when she straightened up again with the box in her arms, the guy was gone. She sighed with relief and went to go carry the box to Sarah. Today was going to be a good day, and nobody, not Kyle and not Bob and Ray’s creepy nephew and not even Alicia herself, was going to ruin that.

**

“You know what I’m doing today?” asked Kitty. “I’m buying some underwear. Seriously, check out how disgusting this underwear is. I don’t know how this happens—every damn tour I think, ‘Okay, Kitty, you can get by with three shirts, but don’t skimp on the underwear.’ And every time I wind up with, like, two pairs of panties. Gross, gross panties.”

“Dude,” said Lindsey, “You’re not gonna toss the old ones, are you?” She couldn’t specifically think of what one might do with a pair of disgusting old panties, but she was sure there was some kind of magnificent prank just waiting to be born.

“Hell no,” said, Kitty, rolling said panties into a ball and stuffing them into her suitcase. “Because you know the second I buy new underwear, gremlins are going to steal it—and by gremlins, I mean Jimmy—or there’ll be some hideous accident with blue Gatorade or fake blood or something, and then I’m right back at square one.”

“You know what I’m doing today?” Steve asked.

A slingshot, perhaps. You could make a slingshot out of panties. “What’s that?” asked Lindsey.

“The same thing I do every day, Pinky. Try to take over the world!” He laughed maniacally. From somewhere at the back of the bus came Jimmy’s voice, practically cooing. Talking to Chantal, obviously.

“Good luck with that one,” said Lindsey. “I’m gonna go head over to Bob and Ray’s place—Gerard and I are gonna hang out.”

That startled Steve out of his mad scientist impression. “Really?” he said.

“Sure, really.” Lindsey shrugged. She felt a little bad for constantly tricking Gerard just to get a reaction out of him, and this was a good opportunity to show him she wasn’t a complete asshole. Plus, it’d be cool to have someone new to talk about painting with, get a new perspective and all that, and Gerard seemed…well, _interesting_ , though it wasn’t the most flattering-sounding word. “We made plans last night,” she told Steve. “I don’t know, maybe we’ll go see a movie or something.”

“Dude,” said Steve with wide eyes, “are you going on a _date_ with him?”

“What if I am?” said Lindsey. It had been a while since her last relationship; she was ready to get back on the horse.

Steve groaned. “Lindsey! We’ve already got one lovesick sap in this band!” He jerked a thumb towards the bunks, where Jimmy was engaged in an exchange of seriously ridiculous endearments with Chantal. “Did you hear that? He just called her ‘pookie!’ If you’re gonna start mooning over this dude, we might as well hang it all up now, call ourselves the Nora Ephrons, and write songs about the magic of love and, I don’t know, being sleepless in Seattle.”

“I call dibs on the Rosie O’Donnell character,” said Kitty. She eyed Steve dubiously and said, “You can be Bill Pullman.”

Lindsey made a face at him. “Do I smell jealousy in the air?” she said. “You’re just jealous because Lucinda’s in New York, and I could conceivably get laid tonight.” It could happen, she thought. Optimism never hurt.

“Ooh, harsh.” Steve put one hand over his heart and one at his forehead, feigning a swoon. “Whatever! Go! Go on! Break my heart, if you really want to, you cruel hussy.” He shook his head sadly and said to Kitty, “It’s just you and me now, kid, a lone drummer and guitarist against the barbarian hordes of sex-obsessed lovebirds.”

“On the plus side, a barbarian horde of sex-obsessed lovebirds would probably be too busy with each other to cause too much mayhem,” Kitty pointed out.

“You’re not making this any better!” said Steve petulantly.

“I’m gonna let you guys duke this one out,” said Lindsey, grabbing her purse. “Smell you later.” She left to the sounds of Kitty downgrading Steve to Steve Zahn in You’ve Got Mail.

Bob and Ray’s RV was parked a little apart from the rest of the Used’s vehicles in the lot. From everything Lindsey’d heard, they were practically married, so she guessed they parked away from everyone else for a little bit of privacy.

Mikey answered the door, looking kind of glum. At least, she _thought_ glumness was what he was aiming for—it might have been boredom, or irritation at seeing her, or general ennui.

“Hey,” she said. “Is Gerard around?”

He nodded without saying anything. It was on the tip of Lindsey’s tongue to say, “You think you could get him for me, then?” But as soon as she’d made up her mind to say it, Mikey went to sit down at the table on the far side of the RV and Gerard appeared in the doorway, rumpled and crazy-haired but apparently happy to see her.

“Hi!” he said, smiling brightly. “You’re here!” He actually looked kind of surprised.

“Well, we said ten, didn’t we?” Last night seemed like a million years ago, some kind of hazy not-quite-reality somewhere between a post-show high and the kind of exhausted fascination she’d had back in art school, when she and all the other pretentious little freshman sat up until three in the morning talking about movies and their classes and the fate of the world and whatever. Still, she was pretty sure that the whole “let’s meet up at ten tomorrow morning” thing hadn’t just happened in her mind.

Gerard shrugged. “Eh. I thought maybe you forgot. Or maybe I made it up in my head.”

Lindsey had to laugh at that—at least she wasn’t the only one a little confused about whether their conversation last night had actually happened. They’d taken it back to the parking lot so as not to talk through Brand New’s set, but it had still been loud and crowded and kind of unreal. “Nope. Pretty sure I’m supposed to be here.”

“Cool,” said Gerard. “So, like….” He scrunched up his nose and one side of his face, kind of looking like a disgruntled cat. “What do you want to do?”

Most of the stuff Lindsey had wanted to do in Sharpston—mainly, check out the gallery and hang out with the curator there—she’d already done. “You wanna catch a movie?” she suggested. That was always easy enough.

“Sure.” His eyes lit up and he said, “There’s a new X-Men movie. I mean, if you want.”

“Pretty people with super powers, what’s not to like?” said Lindsey. She was kind of amazed they were still making X-Men movies, but whatever, she’d enjoyed the other ones enough for the price of admission. “You a comics fan?” she asked Gerard.

He nodded eagerly. “Totally. Like, the day before yesterday, I went to a comic book store and bought, I would say literally, ten pounds of comic books. Like, a big box full of them.”

Hoo boy. “Wow,” she said. “You must have a ton of them.”

“Eh.” He made another scrunchy face. “Not really. It was the first time I’d been to a comic book store in six years, so, I guess I got a little excited.”

“You don’t say?” said Lindsey wryly. But it was actually kind of cute.

He didn’t seem to pick up on her sarcasm. “Yeah! Man, this whole trip has been awesome. Like, sugary breakfast cereal? Oh, God, I’ve eaten a fucking ton of it in the last, like, 48 hours. And, um, music. I mean, obviously you guys, and the Used and stuff, because that was awesome last night, but also, I hadn’t been to a music store in a long time, so I bought a bunch of CDs, too. I think maybe I need to cut back on the spending, actually.” Before she could insert a comment (or, let’s be real, a joke), he frowned and said, “Oh, wait. I looked at the paper this morning, and the first matinee’s at, um, 1:15. So we have some time to kill.”

She took advantage of his pause for breath to say, “That’s okay. We can hang out here for a few hours. Maybe talk, get some lunch.”

He shot a look at the inside of the RV and said, “Um…maybe not here?”

Fair enough—who wanted to hang out with their brothers and uncles during a date? (If this counted as a date, which, really, it didn’t. Probably.) “We could go find a tree to hang out under,” she suggested. “There are probably a lot of nice places to sit around here.”

“Okay. Awesome. Lemme just--” He darted back into the RV. She could hear him talking to someone—Bob, maybe—and then he reappeared with a backpack on his shoulder and a pair of huge, goofy sunglasses. When she laughed at him, he just gave her a cheerful smile from under the sunglasses, which just made him look even sillier.

It felt way too early to be as hot as it was, but there was something refreshing about the feeling of grass under her feet as they got off the blacktop, and Lindsey kicked off her flip-flops to dig her toes into the grass.

“So, um,” said Gerard, taking off the sunglasses and stuffing them in his pocket. He scratched at his hair, looking nervous for the first time all morning. “Are you secretly a movie star?”

“Huh?”

“Well. I mean.” His shoulders shot up, less a shrug than a hunch. “’Cause you’re secretly, like, a badass artist and a rock star. So I wondered, you know, if you were maybe like a movie star or a best-selling author or, um, the queen of somewhere. In your spare time.”

She giggled. “Damn! You’ve revealed my secret. I’m actually a movie star, an author, and the queen of my own island nation. I was going to surprise you.” Then it occurred to her that his joke might have been a nice way of complaining about her earlier…misleading omission of information, and she said, “Hey, you’re not pissed about before, are you?”

“Pissed?” He had a really sincere face, she thought. “No way! I mean, I don’t tell people everything about myself when we first meet, either.”

It kind of wasn’t the same thing, since she’d pretty much always wanted him to find out that she was in Mindless Self Indulgence, just in a way that allowed her to say, “Gotcha!” But whatever, if he wasn’t mad then she wasn’t going to worry about it.

“Well, it’s like, okay, you want people to see you in the best possible light, right?” Gerard went on. “So maybe you kind of _time_ how you tell people stuff about yourself. Like, you don’t necessarily want to tell them everything bad about you right when you meet, so maybe you tell them the good stuff in a way that makes it seem really, really awesome, so when you tell them about the bad parts of yourself they already know you as a really cool person, so the bad stuff doesn’t seem so bad. Not that—it’s not like I think you kill puppies or something in your spare time, I don’t mean that kind of bad stuff. Just, you know, right now it’s just like you get more awesome every time I talk to you, so….” His voice trailed off, and he reddened. “Okay, I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Maybe you should talk for a while.”

She laughed, and tried to think of something to talk about that wasn’t speculation about what rock Bob and Ray had dug Gerard out from under. “Wanna hear my life story?” she asked. She felt like she’d been asked about it in enough interviews that she had a pretty good version down.

“Sure,” said Gerard, in a tone that made Lindsey think he expected some more surprise awesomeness.

She started out talking about the band, and touring, and the album that they had coming out in the fall. But one thing led to another, and after going into a little parenthetical discussion of her passion for Riot Grrl music, she found herself talking about her childhood—how her family had moved around a lot, how angry she’d been all the time. To her surprise, Gerard managed to keep quiet through most of it. He looked genuinely interested in everything she was saying, interrupting every so often with a question, and somehow Lindsey just kept on talking without getting even remotely self-conscious about it. Somewhere around her high school experience, they sat down on the grass. “So,” she said, “on the one hand, it really sucked, because it felt like just when I’d get used to a place, we’d move, but on the other hand, I think it gave me a lot of opportunities most kids don’t have.”

“Yeah?” Gerard said, leaning on his elbow.

“Yeah.” She grinned. “You know, the opportunity to be someone else. Like, here I was the chubby art geek who never talked to anybody, but then we’d move, and I could be the chubby art geek who sometimes talked to the art teacher.”

Gerard laughed at that. “Oh, man. That totally sounds just like my childhood. Minus the moving.”

“Really?” Lindsey said, more fishing for information than anything, because she could totally see Gerard as a fellow chubby art geek.

Gerard nodded, flopping onto his back and folding his arms back underneath his head. “Oh, yeah. I never talked to anyone in school, except my brother.”

“Which one?”

“Hmm?” Gerard looked over at her and seemed to remember something. “Oh, um, Mikey. I think Frank was a lot better at making friends than either of us.”

Lindsey could see that. From what she’d seen of Frank, he seemed like the kind of person who was really willing to put himself out there. Mikey and Gerard weren’t exactly shy, but they were kind of weird—as far as she could tell, Mikey only opened his mouth when he found it absolutely necessary to do so, and Gerard…well, Gerard seemed pretty willing to put himself out there, too, in the form of rambling monologues about comic books and about putting yourself out there, which might not have gone over so well in high school. “It’s good you had your brothers, though,” she said. “Being a teenager sucks anyway, but it’s worse when you’re alone.”

“Yeah,” said Gerard with a heartfelt nod. “No kidding.” He rolled over onto his side and propped his head up on one elbow, tilting his head at her inquiringly. “So, were you always into music, too?”

“No way,” said Lindsey, snorting out a laugh. “Well. I mean, I listened to it, and I was into it that way, but not like…okay, so when I joined the band? My mad bass skills were not enough—I had to wow them with my firebreathing skills.”

Gerard sat up at that. “Your _firebreathing_ skills?”

“Yep.” She was still kind of proud of that one. “Bottle of booze plus a match in my hair plus a strike pad on the bass. Voila—instant fire.”

“Holy shit.” Gerard settled back down, leaning on his elbows, and gave her a toothy smile. “That’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard.” Plucking absent-mindedly at a piece of grass, he added, “It’s a little like that with me, too. I mean, I always played my harmonica, but I wasn’t like…I mean, I think drawing was my big hobby, and music was mostly something I just listened to. But when we met—well, when Mikey was eleven, he wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and Frank already knew, and we kind of formed a band.”

“Jesus. You have a band?” She thwapped him lightly on the arm. “You were keeping that one close to the chest, huh?”

Gerard winced exaggeratedly, like her little tap had actually hurt, and said, “Well, we suck. I mean, we don’t have a drummer, and all our equipment’s a million years old, and….” He shrugged. “We’ve pretty much never played for anyone who’s not, like, family.”

“Have you guys recorded anything?” Based on what he was saying, it sounded like maybe his music was like his art—private. Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Mm. Sort of.” He dug a battered old iPod out of his pocket and started scrolling through it. “My uncle—not Ray and Bob, my uncle Brian—got us some recording equipment, but he didn’t really know what to look for, so it doesn’t sound great.” He looked at her, his hand with the iPod in it half extended towards her, and said, “You can listen. If you want.”

“I totally want!” She grabbed the iPod, hit play, and settled back, trying to be as objective and observant as she could so she could give Gerard some useful feedback. She just hoped it didn’t suck too bad.

The first thing she noticed was, yeah, no drummer, which hurt their sound—Mikey did an okay job keeping them on rhythm for the most part, but sometimes he’d slow down, and then Frank would speed up like crazy to compensate, and then Gerard would start singing at a tempo that wasn’t remotely related to either Frank’s or Mikey’s, until Mikey somehow managed to start playing at Frank’s speed and they got back together. Gerard had a cool voice, like his speaking voice but a lot bigger, but he wasn’t always in tune. Neither were Frank and Mikey, come to think of it.

But despite all that, it wasn’t bad. It was kind of punk, and kind of Queen-type stadium rock, and kind of like the music they played in epic battle scenes in movies. It also had kind of a foreign sound to it. Lindsey couldn’t put her finger on just what made it sound like that, like some kind of unfamiliar folk music. It was easier to hear during the bridge, when Gerard stopped singing and started playing his harmonica. The combined harmonica and guitars sounded weirdly like the couple of times Lindsey’d been to the opera, except she’d pretty much never heard anything like the chords they occasionally hit, which seemed to have too many notes and some extremely weird-ass intervals. The lyrics, as far as she could tell, were about vampires. Or possibly ghosts. Really mournful ghosts.

When it was done, she set the iPod down and looked at Gerard, who appeared to be picking fascinatedly at a scab on his elbow. “I like it,” she said.

He looked up at her like he thought maybe this was the setup of an elaborate practical joke. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said, and she meant it. It needed a lot of work, but there was something good underneath, something really interesting, which wasn’t something you could say for every shitty band out there. “I mean, you guys obviously need a drummer, and maybe you should practice all your parts separately more until you’re more in tune, but it sounded really cool. Who writes the songs?”

Gerard half-smiled, and said, “Well, we all write the songs. I do the lyrics, though.”

She might have guessed that. She’d known Gerard for, oh, about twenty-four hours at this point, but it wouldn’t surprise her at all to learn that he was a fan of horror movies the same way he was a fan of comic books. “Well. I really liked them, so, good job.”

“Thanks,” he said, looking at the ground. “Um. So, it’s like, 11:30 or something now, and it’ll probably take us half an hour to walk to the movie theater, so you wanna have lunch or something?”

“Sure.” It was getting even hotter now, and it might be nice to be in the relative cool of the RV for a while.

When they got back to the camper, Frank and Mikey were sitting on the floor watching what looked like old episodes of Saved by the Bell. They looked up with interest when Gerard and Lindsey walked in.

“Hey,” said Gerard. “Where’re Bob and Ray?”

“They went to the grocery store with Matt. Said we were out of the essentials.” Onscreen, Zack said something smug, and the canned studio laughter howled. Frank took a moment to smile appreciatively at the screen before saying, “But there’s PB and J if you guys want sandwiches.”

Not exactly gourmet, but it sounded good to Lindsey. She and Gerard made sandwiches, Gerard found some paper plates, and they settled down at the table to watch Zack and Slater explain something to Screech. Gerard seemed to be dividing his attention between the TV and Lindsey, looking at both of them like he couldn’t believe he got to be in the presence of something or someone so wonderful. When he ate his sandwich, he smiled like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten in his life. Lindsey wondered how he managed to get through a day if everything excited him so much; she’d have thought it would get exhausting after a while. There were definitely worse ways to be, though.

About halfway through her sandwich, she became aware of the fact that Frank was looking at her. Not staring or anything, just giving her quick glances out of the corner of his eye and murmuring to Mikey in…well, it was definitely another language, but she had no idea which one, because it didn’t sound like a language she’d heard before. She nudged Gerard with her elbow and said, “Dude. What are they saying?”

Gerard, who’d been in one of his phases of infatuation with the television, jerked his head towards her with sudden awareness and then turned to frown at his brothers. “ _Guys_ ,” he said loudly.

Mikey said something to Frank and then, to Gerard and Lindsey, added, “Hey. We’re gonna go hang out on the Used’s bus.” He gave them both a serious look before vanishing out the door, Frank practically skipping out behind him.

“What was _that_ all about?” asked Lindsey.

“I don’t know.” Gerard chewed on his lower lip for a moment before saying, “I think something’s going on with Mikey, but I don’t know what. It’s weird, too, because he usually tells me everything.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest that maybe, for whatever reason had gotten into his goofy-haired little head, Mikey didn’t like her—that last look he’d given them hadn’t done much to make her think he and Frank hadn’t been talking shit about her--but it seemed like an unnecessarily unpleasant thing to bring up on what was maybe supposed to be a first date. So instead she said, “Hey, wanna see what else is on?”

They found a marathon of The Golden Girls on another channel and watched it until it was time to leave for the theater. If Lindsey had thought Gerard looked inordinately amazed by the television, he was pretty much ten times more amazed by the movie theater. Maybe Lindsey would have found it really annoying on someone else, but for some reason Gerard just made her laugh. They shared a grossly overpriced popcorn and talked through the trailers, which Lindsey refused to feel bad about considering how few other people were in the theater.

“You know what? I’ve _seen_ that movie,” she said about some stupid-looking romantic comedy with Matthew Goode and Anne Hathaway. “It was called  Four Weddings and a Funeral. And Notting Hill.”

“Well, I haven’t seen either of those, so I can’t tell,” said Gerard. “But I don’t get why he doesn’t just talk to her instead of storming off like that—like, what if that guy she’s hugging is her brother? Or her friend, or something?”

“He’s probably her brother. Leave no cliché unturned. Oh, look,” she said as the next trailer started, “yet another biopic about a fucked-up musician who did a lot of drugs and found redemption through the love of a good woman. I ought to be taking notes on this. Maybe someday I, too, can be played by Joaquin Phoenix.”

Gerard snorted Pepsi out of his nose.

They were quiet through the movie itself, except when Gerard felt the need to grab her arm and say, “How cool was _that_!” or “Okay, it was _not_ like that in the comics.” For most of it, Lindsey leaned back to enjoy the cheesy dialogue and the shirtless Hugh Jackman while Gerard had a religious experience in the seat next to her.

It was funny, but just a little odd, and between that and the way that Gerard walked through the crowd coming out of the new Will Ferrell movie after their own movie was over--like he didn’t want to come within ten feet of them because he was afraid of what they might do—Lindsey thought that a high-school-aged Gerard might have outdone her in the weird department. Christ, even she had been able to walk through a crowded hallway without flinching every time someone came near. She felt bad even thinking it, though, because every time she looked in his direction, he looked back with a big, happy smile.

It was still basically early when the movie let out, or at least, Lindsey had a few hours to kill before warm-up. They spent the walk back to the parking lot talking about the movie, but when they reached Bob and Ray’s RV, she said, “You got to see some of my art yesterday. Do I get to see any of yours?”

“You want to?” Gerard asked with a confused frown.

“Well, sure,” said Lindsey with a shrug. “If you don’t mind.” She felt like she’d told him way, way too much about herself, rambling on like she had this morning; now, with every weird thing he did, she wanted just a little bit more to find out about him, what his deal was.

“Okay. If you want to, I mean. I don’t mind. Just—wait here a sec.” He darted into the RV and reappeared a moment later with a backpack. “We could go back and sit in the grass,” he said, with a nervous glance at all the people in the parking lot.

“Sure,” said Lindsey, and without even really thinking about it, she grabbed his hand. He stared down at it like he’d never held hands before, but when she started to let go, thinking maybe it was a little cheesy, he smiled at her and held on.

They found a tree to sit under and Gerard opened up his backpack, pulling out a sketchbook and a pile of loose papers before handing them to Lindsey. There were a ton of pictures; obviously Gerard hadn’t been kidding back at the gallery when he said he drew a lot. Most of them were portraits—these seemed to be divided between pictures that looked more or less like regular people and drawings of vampires and aliens and zombies. Lindsey’d totally called the horror movie obsession. A bunch of the pictures were action drawings, though, and under a pile of loose pictures of Mikey and Frank, she found what looked like a handmade comic book and picked it up.

Gerard winced. “Um, I did that when I was fourteen, so, like. I don’t know, it probably sucks.”

“Hush, you,” she said, mock glaring at him. “How’m I supposed to read this if you keep talking?” She flipped through the pages, not really reading so much as skimming, just to get the thrust of the story, and looking at the pictures. It seemed to be about three crime-fighting orphans, all of them obviously based on Gerard and his brothers, but it ended before there was any real conclusion to the story. Lindsey wondered if there was a sequel, or if Gerard had just tired of the idea before he thought of an ending.

Finally, she reached a pencil sketch of herself, probably from last night’s concert. Gerard blushed furiously but let her examine it, and Lindsey studied it intensely, more so she wouldn’t have to meet Gerard’s eyes than to catch the details of the drawing. There was something scary and flattering and maybe sweet about it, and she swallowed involuntarily.

“These are really good,” she said, finally, and not just because she was pretty sure she was developing an embarrassing crush on Gerard. Part of it was probably that his bold colors and angular style appealed to her own tastes, but part of it was just that he was genuinely pretty good.

“Thanks,” he said, looking off to the side somewhere.

“No, seriously.” She opened the comic again, to a page where the Frank character and the Gerard character were facing off in a fight. Some of the proportions were off, but considering Gerard had only been a kid when he’d drawn it, Lindsey thought it was damn good. “Where’d you study?”

“Mm.” Gerard scrunched up his face. “I didn’t really _study_ , so much. My mom got me art lessons when I was a kid, ‘cause our school didn’t have an art teacher, but, um. We don’t really have anything like an art school where I live. Like, there aren’t really any artists, and I guess the town doesn’t really _need_ any. At least not my kind of art. It’s really small.”

“Wow,” said Lindsey, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She couldn’t even imagine living in a place so small it didn’t _need_ art, not without completely suffocating. It didn’t even sound like Gerard had thought about going away for college, which would have been one obvious out. She thought for a moment about how excited he seemed by everything, how worked up he’d gotten by the movie, how he had watched their concert last night with the fascination of a kid who’d never seen one before. “Gerard,” she started before realizing she had no way of finishing the question. There wasn’t really a tactful way of asking a guy you liked whether he was maybe in a cult.

Unfortunately, Gerard had clearly picked up on the hesitation in her voice, because he looked at her with a frown and said, “What?”

She considered coming right out and asking him, but instead she said, “You didn’t think about applying to an art school? I mean, think about how good you’d be if you had someone to help teach you.”

Gerard looked wistful, peering sadly over Lindsey’s shoulder at the comic book, before sighing. “I couldn’t.” He shrugged weakly with one shoulder and made a face. “It’s not like I didn’t think about it, but, well…it wasn’t really an option.”

Lindsey could think of a few reasons art school wouldn’t be an option for Gerard. Maybe his family didn’t have the money, or maybe someone in the family had gotten sick, or maybe his parents really didn’t want to pay to send him to become an artist. Maybe it was just a privacy thing, that he didn’t want his art to be something he did for other people instead of himself. They were all pretty logical reasons, reasons that made a lot more sense than the idea that Gerard and his brothers belonged to some separatist sect that sent their teenagers out to explore the real world before they settled down to six wives and seventeen kids. Still, Lindsey couldn’t help but ask, “Hey, Gerard, you’re not in a cult or anything, are you?”

Gerard laughed, snorting through his nose. “What?”

Well, she hadn’t really thought he was—too much knowledge of pop culture—but she felt relieved that she’d at least gotten the question out there. “Well, you don’t seem to get out much.”

“That’s because I live in the ass end of nowhere, not because I’m in a cult.” He giggled again, high and a little nasal. “I’m not even religious. I mean, I think I believe in some kind of higher power, destiny or fate or something, but I’m not, like, a fanatic.”

“I was just checking,” said Lindsey. “Are you super offended now?”

He wrinkled his nose at her. “No. Just, do I come off like a culty kind of person?”

“Not really,” Lindsey admitted, “but you do come off a little like a visitor from another planet fascinated by our earthly ways.” Gerard’s face fell and his eyes widened at that, so she hastened to say, “Not in a bad way. It’s kind of cute, really.”

Gerard didn’t look too reassured. “Sorry,” he said. “Just…it’s a really small town, and we don’t have a car, and we’re not--” He broke off and gave her a crooked, awkward smile. “We kind of keep to ourselves. It’s not a religious thing, though. It’s kind of like a small town thing, and kind of like an ethnic thing.”

Well, that explained the foreign language Frank and Mikey had been speaking. It explained a lot, really. “Where are you guys from?” she asked.

She wouldn’t have thought it was that weird a question, but it seemed to make Gerard even more uncomfortable. “Um,” he said. “It’s. Uh. You wouldn’t even have heard of it. And I don’t remember it or anything. We moved when I was little.”

All righty then. Lindsey couldn’t decided whether she was more offended that Gerard thought she lacked the geographical knowledge even to have _heard_ of where he was from, or more weirded out that he was so evasive about it. “Okay,” she said, sounding kind of flat even to her own ears.

Gerard reddened. “It’s not—I mean—it’s kind of complicated.”

“What is?”

“Like, okay, we _really_ keep to ourselves. I mean, we _are_ kind of like a cult that way. I’m not supposed to talk about it, and we don’t really have a lot of contact with the outside world. That’s why I haven’t been to a movie in six years and stuff.”

“Why six years?” She thought back to their earlier conversations, and the ‘six years’ number seemed to come up a lot. Gerard hesitated, and she decided she didn’t mind pushing him a little bit. “Come on,” she said. “I gave you my whole life story. You don’t have to tell me secret cult stuff or whatever, but you could at least tell me what the deal is. I mean, as far as I know, Ray and Bob don’t live on some secret compound, and they’re your uncles, right?”

“Kind of,” Gerard muttered. He was silent for so long that Lindsey thought he wasn’t going to say anything more, that he was effectively ending the conversation there. But just when she was about to change the subject completely, maybe excuse herself and head back to the MSI bus, he said, “So, okay,” and took a deep breath. “My parents died when I was five and Mikey was three.”

“God,” Lindsey said, appalled. She hadn’t meant to dig up old traumas. “I’m so sorry.”

He gave her a quick flash of smile, just a tiny tug on one corner of his mouth. “It’s okay. I don’t really remember them anymore. It was a, a boat accident, kind of. Mikey and I were in it, too, but we don’t really remember it. So, anyway, we get rescued by the Coast Guard, and this woman adopts us. Mama.”

“Wait a minute,” Lindsey interjected. “Where was Frank?”

“We’re getting to that,” he said, holding up a finger. “So meanwhile, Frank’s parents die when he’s two, and he gets adopted by his grandpa. His grandpa dies when he’s seven, and he goes into foster care. So, okay, like two or three years later, Mama dies, and Mikey and me get sent to this, um. This group home. And that’s where we met Frank. And we got to be best friends with Frank, and so later, when we met Bob and Ray and they helped us find our biological grandma—six years ago--she adopted all three of us. So we went to live with—with our, you know. Our people.” He paused for a moment, looking sad, and added, “Then she died last year, so now we live with our Uncle Brian.”

Lindsey couldn’t even speak. She couldn’t imagine being orphaned once, much less three times. No wonder Gerard and his brothers were a little odd—fuck, anyone who went through that would probably have some issues. Her own family seemed pretty damn normal in comparison. “Jesus,” she finally managed. “That’s….”

“It sounds a lot worse than it….” Gerard broke off and closed his eyes. “No, actually, it kind of sucked. A lot. But, you know, it’s like, we have each other, and we have Bob and Ray and Uncle Brian and all these people who care about us. So. It could be a lot worse.” He grinned crookedly and added, “Plus. It’s so cool that Bob and Ray let us stay with them this summer. I mean, we get to see all these concerts, and catch up on what’s going on in the real world, and…well. I got to meet you.” He wasn’t looking at her when he added that last part, but there wasn’t anything unsure about his voice when he said it.

Lindsey was still weirded out about the “I can’t tell you where I’m from” thing, but she wasn’t really pissed anymore. She was crushing on probably the weirdest dude in the world, but at least she was pretty much 99.9% sure he was crushing back. She reached out to grab his hand again, and this time he caught on right away and squeezed back. “Hey,” she said. “I’m glad I got to meet you, too.”

He looked up and smiled at her, then, and maybe it was the warm afternoon sunlight that made him look less like a cartoon character and more like a really attractive guy, but whatever it was, Lindsey felt a rush of happy excitement in her chest and said, “Hey, you wanna make out?”

He giggled his weird-ass giggle again and said, “Sure.”

So maybe she wasn’t going to get laid today, but she was more than happy to just hang out on the grass kissing Gerard. Whatever crazy place he was from, at least they didn’t seem to mind if their kids learned how to French kiss, because Gerard was not bad at all, and there was something kind of romantic about the soft grass and the sun shining through the tree branches in funny patterns and the way Gerard twisted his fingers around hers while they kissed. Maybe this was a date, after all.

**

Frank didn’t know why he’d agreed to this. Well, he sort of did—Jamia had asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner with her parents, and he wasn’t about to turn her down. She’d been his best friend for years, and he had pretty much no idea whether or when he’d see her again after this summer, so when he’d gone over to the record store and she’d brought the idea up, it seemed obvious.

Of course, he hadn’t known at the time that he was going to get so freaked about it.

He didn’t really have a ton of nice clothes, but he’d tried to at least look presentable, finding a clean black tee-shirt and some jeans that…well, they were a little wrinkled, but at least they didn’t have dubious stains on them. Was he supposed to bring them something? A bottle of wine? No, wait, he was sixteen, there was no way they expected him to break the law to bring them booze. Flowers? What if they thought he was bringing them to Jamia? Shit, _should_ he bring flowers for Jamia?

Wait. Wait. It wasn’t like he and Jamia were getting married or anything. They were just friends, and this was just a casual dinner with her family. No big deal.

He more or less psyched himself up enough to knock on the door, pasting a polite smile on his face.

Jamia opened the door and smiled somewhat wryly at him. “Hey,” she said.

He relaxed somewhat. He could totally do this. “Hey.”

Jamia shifted from foot to foot awkwardly and then said, as if she were forgetting something, “Oh! You should come in and meet my parents.” With an embarrassed wince, she added, “They might…okay, I talked about you a lot when a little kid, what with the whole running away with the aliens thing at the same time I was adopted. So if they’re weird, or they make stupid jokes or something, just ignore them, okay?”

“Okay,” said Frank, tensing up again. “Hey, you didn’t tell them….”

“Not since I was ten,” she said. “I haven’t mentioned it. I can keep a secret.”

Frank had never really doubted that, so he said, “I know.”

She smiled and said, “Well, come on, then,” gesturing for him to follow her into what he guessed was the living room.

Dr. and Mrs. Nestor were sitting on a couch, but they stood up and smiled when Frank and Jamia entered. “So this must be Frank,” said Mrs. Nestor, reaching out to shake his hand. Frank didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but she seemed a lot less intimidating than he’d feared—she had a Grateful Dead tee-shirt and long hair and a really nice smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, letting go of Frank’s hand so that her husband could grab it.

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” said Dr. Nestor. He had a really firm grip, considering that he wasn’t that big a guy. But he looked nice enough, too, with a sort of goofy hair cut and big glasses and a shirt with the bloody smiley face from Watchmen. He’d probably get along great with Mikey and Gerard; Frank only hoped that meant he’d get along okay with Frank.

“So, what’s the story?” asked Mrs. Nestor curiously. “Not to bring up old history or anything, but we heard about you and two other kids running away or something just a few weeks after we brought Jamia home, and then there was that story about you getting adopted, but it was like you vanished off the face of the earth! You don’t even know how many times Jamia had us call up the guys at the Smith Home for contact information for you.”

“ _Mom_ ,” Jamia said, looking embarrassed. The look she gave Frank clearly said, _I’m not explaining this one—you’re on your own._

“Ah. Well.” From their perspective, Frank could see that he came off looking kind of like an asshole who forgot about his friends. “I really did get adopted,” he said. “But, see, we kind of lived out in the middle of nowhere, and we didn’t have phones and computers and stuff.”

The Nestors’ eyebrows shot up. Great, thought Frank. _I’ve officially managed to convince them that I’m a massive weirdo._ “Is your family…religious or something?” asked Dr. Nestor, trying obviously not to be offensive.

Hah. He’d been living with the Amaltheans for six years, and he had yet to figure out what their religion actually was. He thought it had something to do with communing with nature or something, but when he asked specifically, nobody seemed to get what he was talking about. “No,” he said. “They’re just, uh.” He shot another look at Mrs. Nestor’s Grateful Dead shirt. “They’re kind of hippies. Like, into growing your own food and taking care of the environment and stuff.” It wasn’t even a lie—Brian was always talking about having respect for the planet, like “We didn’t come all the way here just so we could ruin someone else’s home.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Nestor. “That’s kind of cool.”

“Yeah,” said Frank, more confidently now. “They’re super cool.”

Dinner was actually not as bad as Frank had feared. Jamia must have told them that he didn’t eat meat, because the meal was penne with marinara sauce. Frank hadn’t had pasta in years, and whoever did the cooking in Jamia’s house made a mean marinara.

“Well, you’ve got a healthy appetite, don’t you?” asked Dr. Nestor, smiling wryly at Frank over his third helping.

“It’s really good,” Frank said around a mouthful of food. Under the table, Jamia kicked him.

Mrs. Nestor leaned forward on her elbows and said, “So, Frank. Are you still in high school?”

Ah. Frank put down his fork and tried to look responsible. “Um. No. I kind of…finished early.” And just in case they thought “finished early” was a euphemism for “dropping out,” he said, maybe a little defensively, “I didn’t drop out. It was, like, an alternative school, so whenever the teachers thought you’d learned everything you needed to, you could be done.”

“Hmm,” said Dr. Nestor. He didn’t look too surprised. “So, are you planning to go to college?”

Frank could feel himself squirming again. “Not really,” he said. “My friends—my adopted brothers, really—well, we have this band. So, I’m kind of hoping that’s what I can do for a living. I don’t think I’d be very good at college.”

Mrs. Nestor shrugged. “It’s not for everyone. I know that if my band had made it past 1975, I would have stuck with it.” She had a far-off, wistful look on her face that made Frank wonder what had happened, why she hadn’t just started another band.

“You had a band?” he asked.

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. We wanted to be the next Heart.”

“They were good,” said Dr. Nestor. “That’s actually how we met—at one of her bands’ shows.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mrs. Nestor said, reaching across the table to take her husband’s hand. “He hung out after the show just to tell me how much he liked my guitar solo.” She shook her head mock ruefully and said, “See, if he’d told me I was hot, I could have just blown him off, but he had to take the shortcut to my heart, and I haven’t managed to get rid of him yet.” They smiled at each other over the table.

That was kind of romantic. Jamia was right, her parents were cool.

Jamia herself didn’t look as though she agreed at the moment. “You _guys!_ ” She turned to Frank, flushed with embarrassment. “Are you done eating?” At Frank’s nod, she said, “Frank and I are gonna go to my room, okay? I’ll wash the dishes later.”

“You better,” said Dr. Nestor. “I didn’t slave away over a hot stove all day just so I could spend all night scrubbing pots and pans.”

Mrs. Nestor snorted. “You’re so full of it.” She waved a hand in Frank and Jamia’s direction. “You kids have fun,” she said.

Frank followed Jamia upstairs into her room. It was cool, all black and green and purple, with band posters and magazine cutouts and glow-in-the-dark stars all over the walls. Jamia shut the door behind her; her door had a poster of the Munsters on it. “Sorry about my parents,” she said. “They get kind of mushy when they’ve had a couple glasses of wine.”

“I thought they were okay,” said Frank with a shrug. “I’m just glad they didn’t get on my case about the college thing. I didn’t want to be ‘bad influence boy’ again.”

They shared a grin. Frank’s first week at the Smith Home, he’d managed to convince Jamia to break into the kitchens with him so they could figure out how to make brownies. When Brendon and Spencer had found them, the smoke alarms blaring and a baking pan completely ruined by what Brendon had called ‘chocolate cement,’ Spencer had shaken his head and pointed at Frank, saying, “You! I swear to God, you’re like a superhero—Bad Influence Boy.”

Jamia’s grin faded and she said, “I really wish you’d been around when I first went to school here. It was kind of hard. None of the kids knew me, and nobody knew where I was coming from—you know, they all had these happy homes with family dinners and PTA meetings and, I don’t know, game nights and shit like that--and I just felt like this complete freak.”

“ _You_ felt like a complete freak?” asked Frank. “Everyone in my high school could read each other’s minds. They didn’t understand what a movie was, because apparently the aliens just broadcast entertainment into each other’s brains. Oh, and recite epic poetry. Like, a lot.”

“I had to explain to a girl in my fifth-grade class what a group home was, because she kept looking at me like she was going to cry for, like, a week. She thought I was from a workhouse like in Oliver Twist,” Jamia said with a challenging tilt to her chin.

“All the kids in my school spoke a different language,” Frank shot back. “I had to have Mikey translate for me until I figured the language out—and he didn’t speak it, either! He just read their minds and told me what they were trying to say!”

“Once, I couldn’t stay after school for a soccer game because we were going to go to my grandparents’ house, and the captain of my team was like, ‘Well, they’re not your _real_ grandparents anyway, so why do you have to go?’”

“Kids changed their names all the time, because Amaltheans aren’t as attached to their names as we are, and every time something big happens, they change their names—so just when I’d get to know, like, Greg in my classes, he’d come to school one day and his name would be Virgil, and I’d be the only one who didn’t get it.”

Jamia was silent for a long time after that, before finally saying, “Okay, I think you win on ‘weird’ and I win on ‘shitty.’”

“I can accept that,” said Frank. And then, because he did feel bad that he hadn’t been there for her, he added, “Sorry. I mean, you know if I’d been around I would have kicked those kids’ asses.”

“Yeah,” said Jamia with a snort. “You probably would have.” She grinned, and said, “It’s so awesome that you’re back.”

Frank wholeheartedly agreed. “It sucks that we’re leaving tomorrow, though,” he said. “I mean, I can still probably get someone to drive me here while we’re still in the state, but after that….” After that, they could still use cell phones and e-mail, as long as they didn’t talk about alien stuff and as long as Frank was still outside the Republic, but it wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough, not after six years without getting to do any of the stuff that he and Jamia had always done together.

Jamia’s face fell a little, and she said, “Yeah,” exhaling loudly and sitting down on her bed.

“What really frosts my cookies, though,” Frank said, sitting down next to her, “is that this tour would be, like, the awesomest thing ever, except you won’t be there. I’ve been looking forward to it for a year, too.”

“Sorry to spoil your dreams there, buddy,” said Jamia drily. She made a face at him.

“I didn’t mean it like _that_ ,” he said. It wasn’t like it was her fault, but it just sucked. It was a shame that…wait a minute. Frank felt a brilliant idea coming on. “Hey,” he said, “you think your parents would let you come on tour with us? I mean, I know they said you had to wait until graduation, but you wouldn’t be going alone or anything.”

Jamia raised a skeptical eyebrow in his direction. “Yeah _right_ , like my parents are gonna let me ride around in an RV with five dudes all summer.”

“We’re neat!” Before Jamia could object, he admitted, “Okay, well, I’m actually a complete slob, and Mikey and Gerard have some killer B.O., but Bob and Ray are kind of neat.”

“I don’t actually think cleanliness is going to be their main objection.” Jamia started ticking points off on her fingers. “One, they don’t know Bob and Ray. For all they know, they’re, like, pedophiles or something. Two, I’m supposed to be making money this summer so I can get myself a car for school this fall. Three, my parents want me to take this SAT prep course over the summer so I can get a good score on the test my first time and don’t have to keep taking it. Four, I’m not just gonna invite myself to stay with some dudes I don’t even know. You don’t even know if they’d let me come with you guys.”

“They _totally_ would, okay,” Frank argued. He’d be able to convince them, he was pretty sure of it. “And I could get Bob and Ray to call your parents and introduce themselves. I mean, they’re like my uncles, so they’re kind of parental figures, right? And I don’t know, maybe they could get you a job doing merch or something so you could make a little money. And what do you need a prep course for—don’t you know all the answers already?” She still looked supremely skeptical, so Frank resorted to begging. “Come on, Jamia, wouldn’t it be awesome?”

She sighed. “It would be awesome. Totally awesome.” She stared off into space for a long moment, thoughtfully worrying her lower lip between her teeth, before breaking out into a small smile. “I don’t know. Maybe if I convinced them it was, like, job training. It practically is, right? ‘Cause that’s what I want to do, sell my own stuff, so watching the merch sales would be like interning. And I don’t know, I could probably study on the road if I brought my books, right?”

“You totally could,” Frank assured her. “I could even help quiz you and stuff.”

“Maybe,” said Jamia. “I’ll talk to my parents about it tomorrow, and you talk to Bob and Ray, okay?”

“Deal,” said Frank, satisfied. It still didn’t make up for having to leave her again at the end of the summer, but it was going to make the tour quite possibly the most awesome thing in the history of the world.

Jamia looked pretty satisfied herself. “Cool,” she said. And then, with a slightly sly-looking smile, “I guess if the aliens don’t have television, that means they don’t have video games, right?”

Frank shot a look over to the corner, where a TV and a fancy-looking video game console were set up, and then looked back at Jamia. “Right.”

“So, I mean, it wouldn’t be fun for either of us to play a game of Halo, right? Because you haven’t played in six years, and I’m kind of a Halo prodigy, so I’d beat you so badly it would just be sad.”

Frank narrowed his eyes. “Bring it on,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, fetching the controllers, “but just remember, there’s no crying in Halo.”

As it turned out, she did beat him ridiculously badly, but Frank was so happy to be playing video games, and playing video games with _Jamia_ , that he didn’t mind too much. After that they played a round of Super Smash Brothers on Jamia’s old Nintendo 64, since he’d played it more recently and should have “a fighting chance,” as Jamia said. She beat him at that, too, but it was a lot closer, and Frank got in a couple of good blows with Mario’s hammer.

“Have to give you credit, Frank,” she said with a smirk at the end of yet another victorious round, “You put up a good fight.”

“Just wait until next time,” Frank vowed. “I’m spending the next twenty-four hours practicing on this thing, so when you manage to convince your parents to let you come with us, I can spend the rest of the summer schooling you in the ways of old-school gaming.”

She set down the controller and laughed. “Sure, whatever you say,” she said. Her smile grew softer, and she said, “It was fun playing with you like this. Totally reminded me of all those days in the lounge at the Home, remember?”

“Watching Animal Planet and fighting Bill for control of the TV,” Frank said, reminiscing.

“Yeah.” She was still smiling, but her face looked kind of serious. Frank suddenly became aware of how close she was sitting to him—he’d barely noticed it while they were playing, but now the proximity was making the hair on his arms stand up. “You know,” she said, “you’d think after all this time, I don’t know, we’d be totally different people and wouldn’t have anything to talk about and stuff, but…I mean, it’s not like you’re totally the same, and I know I’m not the same, but it feels the same, you know?”

He wouldn’t say he felt _the same_ —he didn’t he’d ever been so conscious of how easy it would be to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder or arm, to see if the skin there was as soft as it looked. He actually felt kind of creepy, thinking about Jamia like she was some hot chick he didn’t even know and not—not his best friend, and the best kickball player at the Smith Home, and the main reason he’d only broken that asshole Paul’s arm once. So, yeah, that was different. But _Jamia_ felt the same, the same awesome friend he’d known forever, and except for the whole pervy checking her out thing, hanging out with her now as great as it had been when they were kids, so he said, “Yeah. Totally.”

Jamia looked away then, looking almost embarrassed. “There’s one key difference between now and then, though,” she said. There was a hint of a pink flush rising up over the freckles on her nose.

“Oh, yeah?” Frank asked. He was amazed he got the words out, his throat was suddenly so dry. “What’s that?”

She half-shrugged, obviously trying to look nonchalant but kind of failing. “You grew up hot,” she said.

She seemed like maybe she was trying to pass it off as a joke, but it still made Frank feel simultaneously warm and fuzzy and like everything in his body had stopped working. “Well,” he said. “Likewise.” They managed to meet each other’s eyes, then, if only to smile awkwardly, and before Frank could help it, he blurted out, “Hey, you wanna kiss or something now?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jamia, and she leaned forward to place her lips over Frank’s. It was warm, and soft, and wet, and better than anything _ever_. The only way this could end up sucking would be if Frank’s kissing was a huge disappointment to her, so he put a little effort into it, trying to work in some tongue without being too gross.

Lucky for him, she laughed into his mouth and stuck her own tongue in, and wow, she was even better at this than the psychic girls (and occasional guy) that Frank had made out with at the Republic.

He went home an hour later floating on a cloud of happiness.

When Jamia’s parents dropped him off in the parking lot, the concert was over, but the kids were still obviously having a good time out by the stage. Frank made his way though a bunch of kids in MSI tee-shirts to the RV, where Mikey and Gerard were sitting on the couch, talking very seriously about something.

“Hey, dudes,” he said. He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a Coke. “What’s up?” He popped open his soda and took a long swig, trying not to look like he was thinking of frivolous things like making out with Jamia.

“Frank?” Mikey said, looking away from Gerard with a worried expression. “Um. Am I creepy?”

Frank spit out his Coke. “What?”

“Am I creepy?” Mikey sighed loudly and looked at his lap, where he was tapping his long fingers on his knees. “Like, do I weird people out?”

Frank wanted to laugh so badly it was crazy. But it wasn’t a joke question; Mikey looked genuinely anxious about it and Gerard looked protectively indignant, so Frank clamped down on the giggle that threatened to escape.

“Of course you’re not creepy,” Gerard said stoutly. “Tell him, Frank.”

This was tricky territory, here; Mikey was gonna know if he lied. Instead of giving an answer either way, he said, “Why do you ask?”

“There was this girl,” said Mikey, looking mournful. “Her name’s Alicia, okay, she’s the bass tech for Brand New. And she was getting tee-shirts this morning for the merch table, and I…I mean, I wanted to help her, but she kept thinking, ‘God, I hope that guy doesn’t bother me,’ so I stayed out of her way. I just kind of, you know, stood around in case she needed any help. But then, um, she wanted me to go away because I was creeping her out. So I did.”

Jesus. Frank loved Gerard and Mikey, he’d fucking kill for them, and they’d never seriously creeped him out, ever, but they were pretty much gigantic weirdos. “Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “You just stood around… _watching_ her.”

Mikey nodded.

“You didn’t say anything to her?”

“I wanted to apologize for creeping her out, but I thought that might make me seem even more creepy.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Frank, shaking his head. “Okay, Mikey, I know it’s weird for you, the whole talking out loud thing, but we’re not psychic. How the hell’s Alicia supposed to know you’re not some freaky stalker or something if you don’t actually say anything to her?”

“Yeah, but….” Mikey chewed on his lower lip. “I mean, if I tell her I didn’t mean to creep her out, I was just staying out of her way, then it’s like she knows that _I_ know what she was thinking, and then…isn’t that even weirder?”

Frank sighed. Gerard, who was looking at him curiously, leaned closer, as if he thought Frank was going to say something deep and wise. That was because Gerard was a total moron. “First off,” said Frank, “you don’t have to be psychic to know that standing around staring at people freaks them out. Because seriously, it just does. And second, dude, you gotta stop reading people’s minds when they don’t know about it. I mean, I’m used to it, and I still think it’s kind of weird.”

Mikey made a face. “I don’t mean to. I can’t really help it, though—you think really loud.”

“Well, try. We’re supposed to be incognito, and you always act even weirder when you forget to talk out loud because you’re reading everybody’s mind.”

“Plus,” Gerard broke in, “the whole privacy thing.” Mikey turned and looked at him with a betrayed expression, and Gerard shrugged. “What?” he said. “I don’t have any secrets from you guys, at least not ones I’d care if you figured out, but I wouldn’t like it if everyone here could tell everything about us just by hanging out with us, you know? They’re not family.” Mikey scowled at him, clearly saying something telepathically, and Gerard stuck out his tongue at him and said, “Dude, don’t even go there. I was the one who had to convince everyone that you knew how to talk and we weren’t about to go on a killing spree. I had to be the normal one.”

Frank took a moment to contemplate how horribly, horribly shitty Gerard would have been at being the normal anything before saying, “Hey, man, that’s what I’m talking about. Privacy, and stuff. Don’t even bullshit me, I know that’s why Uncle Brian taught you guys that mental shield stuff.”

Mikey sighed, clearly defeated. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll try, okay? But…” He looked from Gerard to Frank and back again, and Frank didn’t think he’d seen Mikey look that freaked out in years. “I mean, Alicia. How do I…I don’t know, get her to think I’m not a creep?”

Jesus. Mikey totally had a crush. Frank leaned back in surprise. He supposed he should have seen it earlier, but Mikey’d never really had problems with girls before. While Frank was busy trying to convince them that, yeah, getting to second base could be fun even if only one of you could telepathically tell the other what felt good, Mikey’d been in his element. There weren’t a lot of girls at Wolf Mountain, but Frank was fairly sure Mikey’d still had a pretty active social life. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Mikey might have the kind of crush that made him nervous and unsure of himself. “Wow,” he said. “You really like this girl, huh?”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “Well, _yeah_ ,” he said. “Did you _see_ her when they were setting up for the show last night? She’s so….” He waved his hand around vaguely. “Like, _cool_ , you know? Like she really knows what’s going on, and stuff. That’s hot,” he said with a shrug.

“Sure,” said Frank, though he couldn’t remember paying that much attention when not-Bob-or-Ray techs were setting up. “Okay, well, first off, I’d apologize for creeping her out the next time you run into her.”

Mikey nodded intently, and Gerard leaned forward and put his chin in his hands, gazing at Frank like he was sitting in class and Frank was the teacher. Frank stifled a laugh before saying, “Then—and, okay, this is key—you have to give her some space.” Frank had learned that the hard way trying to get Kate to go to the annual Festival of Youth with him two years back. “And for the love of God, don’t stand around and stare at her again,” he added, just in case it wasn’t totally clear.

“Apologize, space, no staring. Got it,” said Mikey.

“And seriously,” Frank added, “stop reading people’s minds. If you ever actually get this girl to go out with you, you want her to be able to trust you, right?” Mikey nodded. “Right, so don’t be in her brain all the time. You gotta respect each other’s space, you know?”

Based on the face he made, the concept of “space” was still clearly a little murky to Mikey, but he said, “Right,” and stood up. “Okay. Here goes.”

“Good luck,” Gerard said, giving Mikey the telepathic conversation look and smiling hugely. Frank knew from talking to them that Gerard wasn’t so good at sending words, so Frank’s best guess that he was sending reassurance.

“Hey,” he said. “You’ll be great, okay? You’re totally awesome—just don’t scare her away before she can see it, all right?”

Mikey smiled, small but warm, and said, “Thanks, Frank. You’re a stand-up guy,” before stepping outside and disappearing.

Frank settled in deeper on the couch, still grinning, when something occurred to him—Mikey had to be over the moon over this girl, because he hadn’t even commented on the thing with Jamia. Frank flushed just thinking about it. It was probably a good thing he was taking the time to instill some guidelines about boundaries, because there was some stuff you just didn’t want even your best friend in the world to see.

Right on cue, Gerard flopped down next to him and said, “Hey, you seem…happier than usual. Is it Jamia?”

“Fuck, Gerard!” Frank said, unable to keep from bursting into a laugh.

“What?” Gerard said. “Dude, I’m not even reading your mind, seriously. You’re like, glowing or something.”

“Seriously?”

Gerard nodded earnestly. “I mean, I always heard that expression applied to pregnant women, which, okay, whatever, but sometimes when people are really happy, or really anything, they just kind of radiate it, you know?”

Frank thought about Jamia’s face after that first kiss, bright and excited and beautiful, and said, “Yeah, I think I know what you mean.” He shrugged. “So. Um, you know how I went to her house for dinner?”

“Yeah?”

“So, I met her parents and stuff, and we hung out in her room, and it was like….” Frank didn’t even know why he was bothering to try to find words, Gerard probably already knew what he meant, but he really wanted to be able to capture that feeling out loud. “It was like all that time apart didn’t mean anything, you know? We still knew each other, deep down, and we could still talk about anything, and we were just…is it gonna sound really stupid if I say we were really _together_?”

Gerard shrugged. “If that’s how you felt, it doesn’t sound stupid to me.”

Frank leaned his head on Gerard’s shoulder for a second, because seriously, had he lucked out with adopted brothers or what? Then he sat up again to say, “So. You’ve seen Jamia, right, you know she’s fucking gorgeous, but I didn’t want to be the skeezy guy friend, you know, so I didn’t say anything. But then….” He felt a warm glow of happiness in his chest just thinking about it. “Well, she said I was hot, and I said she was hot, too, and then we made out and stuff.”

“Wow,” Gerard breathed. “That’s so cool. It’s like, _destiny_ or something—you knew each other when you were kids and now you meet again. Shit, Frank, that’s amazing.”

Frank giggled. _Destiny_ , for crying out loud. Gerard was such a dork, but in this instance, a little part of Frank thought he might be right. “Yeah,” he said.

Gerard squirmed a little bit in his seat. “It’s so cool, that Mikey’s found this girl he likes, and now you and Jamia hooked up.”

“You do know that ‘hooked up’ means ‘had sex,’ right?”

“It does?” Gerard said with a frown. “Oh. Well, you know what I mean.” He flailed an arm to one side in a huge, vague gesture.

“Yeah.” Frank scooted closer to him on the couch. Gerard twitched again, away from Frank and then back again, and Frank put an arm around his shoulders. Gerard was warm and stinky, which was pretty much par for the course, but he wasn’t usually this jumpy, at least not around Frank. “What’s up with you?” he asked.

Gerard twisted his mouth into a perplexed little knot before saying, “Um. Okay, I think I maybe found somebody, too.”

“Lyn-Z, huh?” Gerard completely failed at hiding his massive, massive crush, and Lyn-Z actually seemed to like him, too.

“Yeah,” said Gerard.

He didn’t say any more, but his smile was huge and bright and happy in a way that Frank hadn’t seen since Helena had died. It made him feel good, kind of settled and relieved, to see it. “Hey,” he said. “Good for you, man.”

“Thanks,” he said. And then, “Hey, Frank, you’d tell me if I were doing anything creepy, right?”

Frank thought about Kate again and said, “Dude, I’m not exactly the authority on not being creepy.” Gerard looked like he was about to object, so Frank hurriedly added, “But yeah, sure, if I think you’re being creepy, or weirder than usual, I’ll let you know.” And then, because he knew Gerard would be pleased he’d asked, and because he really didn’t want to fuck things up with Jamia, he added, “And you’d do the same for me, right?”

Gerard beamed. “Of course! You won’t be able to shut me up!”

Frank couldn’t help it. “I can’t shut you up _now_.”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Gerard, leaning over to give Frank a half-hearted noogie.

Dude, thought Frank, fuck money and power and shit, this right here was happiness.

**

Jarvis Cocker felt ready to crawl out of his skin. They’d spent _fourteen years_ on this planet, trying to blend in, keeping their eyes and minds open, and now that it was finally paying off, they had to sit around the office while fucking Maja Ivarsson decided whether they had a case or not?”

“Fuck this,” he said for the dozenth time to Brian. “Let’s wipe her mind and have done with this. I’m ready to chuck this FBI gig, anyway.”

Brian rolled his eyes in a particularly infuriating way and said, “I know it’s difficult, but if you could just think about this for a moment without flying off the handle, you’d realize that we’ve had leads before that seemed this promising—on paper, at least—but didn’t amount to anything. What if this one turns out to be another of Campbell’s hallucinations? You do remember how difficult it was to get ourselves _into_ the FBI to begin with, don’t you?”

Of course he did—he was the one who’d had to carefully investigate the records humans left for themselves, on computers, in photographs, in birth certificates and credit card statements, and he was the one who’d had to construct lives for himself and Brian that would allow them access to the best alien-hunting resources the dollar could buy. But a hunt that dragged on for fourteen years without any sign that they were on the right track was a hunt that lost its urgency and its interest, and Jarvis was more than ready to do something else with himself. And if this turned out to be one of Campbell’s hallucinations, well, getting themselves back into the FBI would be the least of their problems.“We’ve never had a lead this promising,” he said. “And we’re wasting time.”

“God,” said Brian, “and you’re supposed to be the technology expert. This isn’t the Dark Ages—why don’t you do a little tracking on your computer?”

As if he hadn’t done that the very hour that Viglione and Palmer had sent him their information. There was no use telling Brian this, though, since he already knew it. Jarvis sighed. “I suppose I could call up Patrick Stump and—what’s Wentz’s attorney’s name? Hurley?—and lean on them a bit, see if they know anything about where our little scions are now.”

“There’s the spirit,” said Brian smugly.

Jarvis sighed and reached across his desk to grab the phone. He supposed he ought to be grateful that Hurley and Stump’s obvious forgeries made it clear that something was fishy about Gerard and Mikey Minnellis’ “adoption” by Helena Rush; they hadn’t bothered to construct an identity for Helena Rush beyond a birth certificate and a social security number, so there was no reason for a careful observer to believe that Ms. Rush actually existed. Amateurs.

The phone rang three times before a pleasant male voice on the other end said, “Hello?”

“Yes, hi, is this Patrick Stump?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Special Agent Cocker with the FBI. You were a witness for the adoption of Michael and Gerard Minnelli and Frank Iero by Helena Rush, June of 2008?”

“Um. Yeah.” Stump sounded suspicious, now. Well, it would have been too much to hope for that the man was completely stupid.

It occurred to Jarvis that, even if Stump himself had no idea where Helena’s grandsons were, there was a chance he was still in contact with the men who had helped them escape the first time—Bob Bryar’s information was still on a report filed by Sheriff Travis McCoy six years ago. He quickly scribbled on a Post-It “TRACE STUMP’S OUTGOING CALLS--FIND SERVICE PROVIDER?” before saying, “We’ve come across some irregularities with Ms. Rush’s record, and we wondered if you still had any contact information for her.”

There was a shuffling sound in the background. “Um, I’m afraid I don’t right now,” said Stump in a cool, professional voice. “If I come across it, though, I’ll send it your way. Is this a good number to reach you with?”

Ah, Stump was angling for his cell number. Well, he’d already known Wentz’ team had someone good with computers on it; this just confirmed it. “This number’s fine,” said Jarvis. “We’d appreciate your help.”

“No problem,” Stump said, hanging up.

Heh. A few more calls like this, and Stump and his people would be panicking; if they had a way to reach Bryar or Schechter, or, God willing, Helena Rush, they would, if only because they and the Minnelli boys would be the only witnesses who could clear Pete Wentz and his cronies from the charge of illegal forging of official documentation.

“Any progress?” asked Brian, smirking. He did that far too often for someone whose only claim to fame was being the Emperor’s fucking lap dog. But then, Molko wasn’t ashamed of that, he was fucking proud of it.

“You’re fucking right I’m proud,” Brian said. His smirk was gone, now. “I haven’t got a problem serving the Emperor to the absolute best of my ability. Have you?”

Jarvis winced. God, the fucker was going to make the entire office think they were spies for…whatever countries on Earth still had an emperor. “Of course I don’t,” he said, because next thing you know, Brian would be writing _him_ up as a traitor. “I came here with you, didn’t I?” He’d given up quite a bit to do it, too, although it didn’t do any good thinking about that, now.

“Um. Am I interrupting anything?”

Jarvis swiveled around in his chair. It was the Australian guy, Lee—he’d had to stop thinking of him as “the new guy” since Knowles joined. Although technically, Knowles was a woman, which Jarvis gathered made more of a difference here than it would back home, so maybe she could be “the new girl” and he could still call Lee “the new guy.” “What do you want, Lee?”

“Brought you this,” said Lee with a grin, extending a signed memo from Ivarsson. “She’s okayed your mission.”

“Our ‘mission?’” said Brian snidely. “Aren’t you sweet.” He took the memo, read it over swiftly, and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.

Lee looked nonplused, but he waved gamely as he turned to leave. “Best of luck,” he said earnestly before vanishing down the hall to his and Knowles’ office.

Brian stood up and grinned at Jarvis, his earlier anger apparently forgotten. “The chase is on,” he said. “Let’s report back, and we can be on the road.”

“Yes!” Jarvis pounded on his desk with exhilaration and said, “Where are we starting?”

“Oh, I thought we might start with Bob Bryar. Campbell said one of the aliens’ “associates” was called Bob, and he drove a recreational vehicle. I seem to recall that Bryar and a recreational vehicle were involved the last time we had a lead on this little bunch. According to the website of a band called the Used, they’re on tour and Bob Bryar is serving as their drum tech.”

Jarvis considered strangling Brian for a long minute. “You couldn’t have told me they were traveling with Bryar _before_ I called Stump? The whole point of that was to find out where they were—Stump might alert them to us, and if you already knew where they were, it wasn’t worth the risk at all.”

Brian shrugged. “Kept you occupied, didn’t it?”

So much for serving the Emperor to the best of his ability, Jarvis thought savagely as he and Brian made their way out of the office to find a spot where they could contact their immediate superiors. Stupid fucker. Fuck him and his fucking mental shields. It would serve him right if the grandsons escaped back to wherever the hell the rest of the splitters were hiding.

It was actually quite difficult to find a place in the city where one could find the privacy required to contact a space ship, so they drove out past the city limits, north on the old highway, where the houses were few and far between and probably filled with crackpots anyway, to judge from their choice in lawn decorations.

Jarvis kept the communicator in his car as a general rule. It looked like an mp3 player, but no human who stole it would be able to turn it on, and it emitted a low-level signal that hummed in the back of Jarvis’ mind all the time, so he always knew where it was. These things were a dime a dozen on any outpost or colony planet in the Empire, but they were pretty hard to get a hold of here.

“Well,” said Brian impatiently, leaning forward over the dashboard and scanning the horizon anxiously, “are you going to call them, or am I going to have to do it?” Brian always got pissy when they had to call Commander Monáe. Jarvis’ personal theory was that he was the same mix of intimidated and jealous Jarvis himself had had when it came to younger people with better careers than him. Back in the days when he’d still had a career, of course.

“Relax, Brian,” he said, and he closed his eyes. After weeks of carefully making sure he used his hands to turn on everything, there was something rather freeing about using the communicator to scan the skies for Monáe’s ship and to dial her receptor codes, all without lifting a finger.

Ditto’s face appeared in his mind. “Cocker!” she said delightedly. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Well, it’s a slow business sometimes,” Jarvis said. “Lovely outfit.” Ditto was in many ways a kindred spirit, and her creative sense of style was no exception; today she was wearing a tunic cut in the style of the Imperial Arm’s uniform but in an iridescent shade of what would be called “rose” or something of the sort on Earth.

“Why, thanks,” said Ditto. “You’re looking sharp yourself. Did you make that?”

Jarvis imagined the lapel of his jacket, made of a soft fabric he’d found at a local craft store. “I did,” he said, pleased she’d noticed. “I don’t suppose Commander Monáe’s available to talk? We actually have a bit of good news for her.”

Ditto raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s a refreshing change. I’ll call her.”

A moment later, Monáe appeared, her hair styled, her tunic utterly smooth, her face impassive—every inch the Imperial Commander. That was the thing about Monáe, though; she had the most thoroughly complicated system of mental shields of anyone Jarvis had ever met, so if Monáe had a less official side, she’d certainly never shown it to him. “Molko. Cocker,” she said, nodding to each of them in turn.

“Commander Monáe,” said Brian respectfully. “We’ve got a lead on the False Empress’s grandsons, and on Brian Schechter. One of our informers told us that they teleported into the woods with another boy, and apparently they’re travelling with a musical group.”

Monáe raised her eyebrows. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t quite a few of your ‘informers’…mistaken, shall we say?”

“Well, apparently we got a pretty good description of Schechter from this joker,” Jarvis broke in, “and the names of the boys he was traveling with match up with some names from a previous case our agency’s dealt with. The reason no one followed up on that case was that Schechter mind-wiped the agents on the job.”

“Hmm,” said Monáe, sounding overly-cheerful about it. That was never a good sign. “That does sound promising. And it only took you…how many years was it on Earth? Fifteen?”

“Fourteen,” said Jarvis. Let Monáe get angry. What could she do to him? He’d already lost his family, his home planet, any chance of advancement in his career. The worst she could do was stick him with Brian for another fifteen years on another fruitless chase. Well, or she could kill him, but that didn’t look so bad in comparison.

“Thank you,” she said dryly. “Well. It’s been a decade on the homeworld since the traitors escaped. In the grand scheme of things, not a long time, perhaps, but for one who, in the old days, was said to be the best tracker in the Empire….”

If Monáe thought she was going to get under his skin by wounding his professional pride, she had another think coming. Sure, in the beginning, he’d been frustrated with himself and thanking his lucky stars he’d broken his bond with Candida and the lads, lest he have to face their shame at his failure. But honestly, the longer he stayed, the less he cared. This had clearly been the Emperor’s way of getting rid of him for being too popular and for his perhaps ill-advised jokes about the Emperor’s paranoia. Of course, it also had the added side benefit of possibly capturing rebels and pretenders to the throne. Well, fuck it, Jarvis didn’t care about any of it anymore.

Monáe narrowed her eyes at him. “Careful,” she said, her voice smooth. “You’re treading awfully close to treason yourself, Cocker.”

“He didn’t mean it,” Brian interjected. “He’s just—it’s been fourteen years, commander. Anyone would get tired.”

“Yes, tired,” said Monáe coolly. “I’ve been floating around this…this bizarre anomaly of a planet for five years, waiting for any sign, _any at all_ , that they’re here, so we can finally wipe out the last of the Resistance and maybe even expand the Empire to a new galaxy. And yet all I get is report after report of failure. Yes, you could say it makes me tired. This was supposed to be my opportunity to prove myself.” Her expression hardened, and Jarvis felt one part of her shields come down, radiating irritation and impatience. “Do you know how many commanders there are in the Imperial Arm?”

“A lot,” said Jarvis with a shrug. Hell, if Monáe had actually expected a career advancement over this assignment, she was a lot more optimistic than Jarvis was. It would certainly explain her pissiness now, though.

“Some four billion, Commander,” said Brian, shooting Jarvis a nasty look.

Monáe nodded. “And do you know how many are from the colonies? From my homeworld, Acindia? I’m fairly sure you don’t, so I’ll go ahead and tell you. About ten per cent of the commanders are from the outer colonies, though we make up about ninety per cent of the imperial population. Most of those come from the big industrial worlds. Nine hundred and eighty-six come from Acindia.” Her expression grew even colder. “That’s a mere fraction of a per cent. I’m sure, since you’re both from the homeworld and threw your careers away failing to stop the damned Uprising in the first place, you have absolutely no conception of what I had to do to get this position. How many necks I had to step on.” She gave them a sweet smile. “If I find that once again, you’ve given me a false lead and I’m forced to report yet another failure to the Admiral or the Emperor, I assure you, I would have absolutely no moral qualms about stepping on _your_ necks.”

Fuck. Jarvis believed her, too.

“Well. Happy hunting!” she said with another bright smile, and with that she vanished from Jarvis’ mind, leaving behind an after-image as bright as when you stared into the sun. Suns. Fuck, he was getting way too assimilated.

Ditto reappeared, staring incredulously at Jarvis and Brian. “Wow,” she said. “Your good news certainly put the commander in a good mood.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll be in a better one once we bring the leaders of the Resistance to her,” said Brian determinedly. “We’ll be able wipe out their whole damned hideout.”

“What a thought,” said Ditto, shaking her head. “What’ll we all do with ourselves, then?”

It was a good question, thought Jarvis. One worth thinking about.

*

Monáe settled into the seat in her private quarters. She rarely had the time to meditate onboard—her duties kept her far too busy, and besides, even in her quarters, the necessary privacy was a precious and rare commodity. She hoped, however, that given the rather unexciting routine of the last few months or so, her crew would be able to handle themselves well enough to spare her for a couple of hours.

“Commander?”

She sighed. Apparently not. “Enter,” she said, shifting the chamber open, and she stood to meet whoever it was at the portal. She hoped that it wasn’t Ensign Pope having trouble with the hydroponics again. Try as she might, she had never quite been able to project an aura of “I know nothing about either botany or engineering, so please don’t ask me about either.”

It wasn’t Ensign Pope, though. It was Lieutenant Ditto, whose businesslike expression melted into one of somewhat anxious inquiry as the portal slid shut behind her. “Janelle?” she asked, switching to mind-speech. “What did Cocker and Molko have to say?”

Ditto must have closed off the command corridor, to be addressing Monáe by that name. Taking on an Earthish professional name was one thing; their mission to this planet was a significant event that a name change would really be expected, and half the crew had taken on business names from Earthish satellite transmissions. Having an Earthish familiar name, though, was the kind of gesture that might undermine her authority with the crew, the kind of thing she shared only with her second. “They say they’ve found the pretenders to the throne,” she said. “For real, this time, Beth.”

Beth exhaled loudly. “Fuck,” she said, an idiom she’d obviously gotten from Cocker. “I thought it must have been something like that. Molko seemed more determined than usual. D’you think they’ll catch them?”

“It’ll be the end of them if they don’t,” said Janelle. “The Emperor’s getting impatient. They might be spared death, but they’ll probably be exiled.”

“Right,” Beth said softly. Janelle knew that she and Cocker were friends, and she extended a tendril of sympathy. Accepting it, Beth said, “But they wouldn’t even have told you if they didn’t think they really had the heirs in sight this time.”

“Probably not.”

“This is it, then,” said Beth. “Our big moment.”

Beth was from Arkania, another colonial planet almost criminally underrepresented in the Arm, and like Janelle, she had had to battle unimaginable odds to reach her current rank. It was one of the things that had first drawn Janelle to her, to seek out her company and later her support as first lieutenant. They had long been waiting for the event that would make the years of training and political maneuvering worth it—the moment in which they could accomplish something that would fill their planets with pride. And Beth was right. If this wasn’t their last opportunity to make their names, it was certainly the first they’d seen, and one that would have to be handled very carefully. “It might be,” Janelle said. “It really might be, especially if the heirs can lead us to the rest of the rebels, and I’m sure they can. I’ll have to inform the Emperor of their report.”

Beth nodded seriously. “Of course. And I’ll have to contact our friends on the border planets. They’ll want to hear, of course, when we have the rebels in custody. “

“Of course,” Janelle echoed. She met Beth’s eyes and couldn’t help but grin, seeing her own excitement reflected in Beth. It was one of the great mysteries, the force that brought such spirits together as hers and Beth’s, but she was grateful every day for it, and for the fantastic luxury of having someone on board with whom she could be wholly herself. Of course, she couldn’t show her exhilaration to the crew. They already resented having to serve under her on this dead-end mission; drawing attention to her youth wouldn’t be at all helpful. Attempting to school her features into a placid, commanding mask, she said, “Clearly, we’ll need to meditate on this. Our wits will have to be at their sharpest.” Gesturing towards the seat on the far side of the room. “Would you care to perform a meal ritual with me?”

Beth wiped her own expression clean of laughter and excitement, but her eyes were still dancing with amusement. “I’d be honored, Commander.”

**

Mikey woke up and took a deep breath, once again feeling vaguely lonely. It was stupid—he was surrounded by warm, comforting thoughts, from Bob and Ray’s quiet worries about whether they had enough breakfast cereal to Jamia and Frank’s brightly-colored dreamscapes to Gerard’s familiar mish-mash of images and sounds next to him on the sofa bed. Even Bunny was a friendly, familiar presence in his mind. He had pretty much no excuse for being lonely. He couldn’t help it, though. Somehow, people thinking he was strange and a little creepy had never really bothered him until Alicia.

He’d been trying to work up the guts to talk to her for days, but it was hard. The first attempt had been an utter disaster; he’d been so intent on finding her that he hadn’t watched where he was going and had tripped over a nice young couple’s dog, skinning his knee and knocking the guy’s drink out of his hand. He’d apologized, both to them and to the dog, and gotten the guy a new drink, but the whole experience had robbed him of any courage he’d managed to build up.

And it wasn’t getting any better. Every time he got near enough to actually see her, he remembered how shitty he was at making himself understood verbally and he had to go away again before he accidentally managed to convince her he was a serial killer or something. Flirting had never been this hard back home—you knew someone was attracted to you, they knew you were attracted to them, and you both knew what you wanted to do. It was pretty straightforward when you were both telepathic. But flirting with a normal human girl when you were the weird alien kid was another kettle of fish altogether.

It wouldn’t have been this bad if he were the only one thinking about summer romance, but as far as he could tell, Jamia and Frank had gotten together as easily as if they were meant for each other, and Lindsey seemed to think that Gerard’s weirdness was cool, or at least funny. Mikey _hated_ being jealous of them—it made him feel like scum to begrudge them their happiness—but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. And on top of it, he had this weird itchy feeling in the back of his mind, like something was going to happen—only he didn’t know what it was, whether it would be good or bad, or what, if anything, he was supposed to do about it. Real useful.

He crawled out from between Frank and Gerard and managed to step onto the floor from the foot of the bed without waking either of them up. Stepping around the air mattress, he quietly opened the door. Ray and Bob were sitting on folding chairs in front of the camper, sipping their coffee, and Bob looked up at the sound of the door opening. “Hey, Mikey,” he said softly. “Close the door and come on out here.”

Mikey closed the door and sat on the pavement next to Bob, since there weren’t any other folding chairs. “Morning,” he muttered.

“Morning,” Ray replied. “Hey, I’ve been listening to you guys’ demos again, and I have some ideas for stuff you can do with the bassline. You really have to get a drummer, though.”

“We know,” said Mikey. “Jamia said her friend Darren would do it.” Mikey vaguely remembered Darren from the few months he’d spent at the Smith Home; he didn’t remember him playing drums, but then, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway, since chances weren’t real good that Darren would want to move to an alien compound in the middle of nowhere just to join a shitty pop-punk band.

“Well, if you need someone to practice with over the summer,” said Ray, “the old man here plays some pretty mean skins,” and he elbowed Bob in the arm.

“I think they’re probably gonna want someone who’s played in the last decade,” said Bob wryly, but underneath, Mikey could tell that it would flatter him to be asked, that he’d welcome the chance to spend time with them in an area he felt comfortable.

“Don’t even front, Bob,” he said, “I bet you rule.” Bob rolled his eyes and ruffled Mikey’s hair, a slight red flush spreading over his nose.

“Maybe I can dig my set out of the storage trailer,” he said. “Any drums are better than no drums, I guess.”

Mikey nodded, but to be honest, he wasn’t really thinking about The Black Parade at the moment. Would talking to Alicia really be that scary? Aside from the possibility of total and crushing rejection, what did he have to lose? Nothing, really, since she already thought he was a creep. Worst-case scenario, she _still_ thought he was a creep. Really, things could only get better. He had no excuse for hiding from her.

“Hey,” said Ray, “What are you thinking about?”

“I think I’m gonna go wonder around,” said Mikey, standing up. “Think about stuff.”

Bob nodded calmly. “Fair enough. Stay out of trouble.”

That was one thing Mikey liked about Bob; he didn’t push when you wanted to be alone, he just accepted it. He knew what it was like to need time away from everything.

Of course, in this case, Mikey couldn’t really get away from what was bothering him, since the whole goal was to try to _fix_ what was bothering him. He tried to hold on to what Frank had told him: apologize, give her space, don’t stare. Apologize, give her space, don’t stare. He could do that. Probably.

The door creaked as he stepped away from the RV, and suddenly Bunny was weaving herself in between Mikey’s legs. If he thought she was letting him out of her sight while he faced something he was afraid of, she said, he had another think coming.

 _Thanks, Bunny_ , he said, reaching down to scratch between her ears. Bunny was good backup for this kind of thing—she was good at stealth, and she could keep a secret. Plus, her keen sense of smell made it a piece of cake to find Alicia, even with Mikey trying to keep his mental shields up.

He didn’t have to go far. She and Sarah, the girl who did Brand New’s merch, were playing cards in front of a concession stand, sipping smoothies and talking about…no. Wait. He wasn’t going to listen to their conversation or their thoughts. It wasn’t polite here.

He walked up, swallowed, and said, “Hi.”

Sarah looked up at him, confused but mostly cheerful, and said, “Hi yourself.” But Alicia rolled her eyes before muttering out a grudging greeting. Crap.

“Um.” He pondered asking to talk to her alone, but then he thought that might actually make him seem even creepier, so he said, “So. Uh. I’m Mikey. I think I might have been kind of weird the other day? When you were grabbing the box of tee-shirts?”

“Little bit,” said Alicia, playing a card. She was giving off a vibe of “Get lost” that Mikey couldn’t help but pick up.

Mikey wondered if he was flushing. Or maybe he was just getting sunburned. Either way, his face felt uncomfortably warm. “So. Um. I’m really sorry about that. I just, I thought maybe I should help you with the box, but then I thought that maybe you didn’t need help because it was just one box and I might get in the way. I kind of went back and forth on it. And then I remembered, ‘oh, yeah, maybe I better say something,’ but by that time I thought maybe it was too late to say anything without it being super weird. So. Anyway, I just wanted to apologize about that.”

Sarah and Alicia were both staring at him now. “So,” said Alicia after a while, “you planning on making a habit of it? Just kind of standing around staring at people?”

Maybe this was his cue to go. “Nope,” he said. “So. Sorry about that.” He wandered away, feeling like the most awkward person alive. Jesus. He was seventeen years old, for fuck’s sake, and apparently complete sentences still posed a problem. He felt suddenly homesick; he might have been a little weird at the Republic for growing up among Earth people, but not so much that he couldn’t make friends or talk to people he was interested in. Here he just felt weird and out of place.

On the plus side, he had so much new music in which to drown his sorrows, it wasn’t even funny. He was probably going to have to get a new iPod to hold it all.

Bunny made an indignant noise beside him. It was ridiculous, she said, these young cats making their toms go through the motions of a fight to prove their prowess, when anyone could see that Mikey would father strong kittens.

Um. _It’s okay, honest_ , he told her. _I’m not really looking to father kittens right now, anyway_.

Whatever, said Bunny. She didn’t get the human mating system—all that stress and, more often than not, no kittens at the end. She sniffed again and informed him that she herself had excellent taste in choosing toms, and if any of her kittens were still around, she’d be proud to show them to him. They had all come out lovely.

Mikey would have asked her about the kittens, and if Ray and Bob had any pictures, but her attention was suddenly on the neon green Frisbee flying in their direction. She hissed at it and bumped at Mikey’s shin with her head until he stepped aside, letting the Frisbee glide into the grass behind him.

“Hey,” called a guy that Mikey recognized as Brand New’s drum tech, “you wanna get that, man?”

Mikey shrugged and turned to pick the Frisbee up, tossing it to the drum tech. The guy caught it with a smile and said, “Hey, aren’t you Bob and Ray’s nephew?”

He nodded. He recognized the other guys, now, too—one of them was the guy who tuned Vincent’s guitars, Kyle, and the other was the keyboard tech. Neil? No, Noah.

“I’m Justin,” said the drum tech, tucking the Frisbee under his arm and jogging up to shake Mikey’s hand. “Mikey, right?” At Mikey’s nod, he said, “You want to play? The more, the merrier.”

Mikey hesitated. He was really bad at sports. Plus, Bunny told him not to do it—who wanted to play a game whose whole point was that people threw things at you? It sounded like a dog game. On the other hand, thought Mikey, he could use practice talking to people he didn’t know. It was going to be a seriously awkward summer if he never got any better at acting like a normal person around Alicia. “Okay,” he found himself saying. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

“All right!” said Justin, tossing him the Frisbee. “Your throw.”

He hurled it hesitantly; it seemed to hook back around and fly off to the side, almost hitting an extremely indignant Bunny. _Sorry_ , he said.

“Hoo boy,” said Kyle, his eyes wide. “Looks like we’ve got a rookie here.”

“Hey, I don’t have to play. Sorry,” said Mikey. He was totally going to suck at this and end up convincing everyone that he was an even bigger weirdo than they already thought. Fuck.

“Don’t sweat it,” said Noah. “Just—like, curl your wrist when you throw, right, and let go when your arm’s going the way you want the Frisbee to go.” He paused and said, “Did that make any sense? Go get the Frisbee and try again.”

Mikey obeyed. Whatever, if they didn’t care that he was awful, maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal after all. Still, he concentrated on curling his wrist like Noah had, trying to figure out when the right time was to throw the disc so he didn’t end up killing someone, and when it looked like it was going to fly off over Kyle’s head into a concession stand, he frowned at it until it curved more or less in Kyle’s direction.

Kyle leaped up and caught it. “Hey!” he said. “That’s more like it.” He leisurely tossed the Frisbee to Justin as he said to Mikey, “Have you never thrown a Frisbee before?”

He had, in gym class back in Monroeville, but it had been a long time ago and what he remembered wasn’t that pleasant, so he shrugged and said, “Not really.”

“Not really?” said Justin with a laugh. “Where the hell are you from?”

Somewhere they’d never even heard of a Frisbee. “Small town,” he said, watching as the Frisbee flew back to Noah. “Not big on sports.”

“I guess not.” Noah threw the Frisbee to Mikey. “What do you do for fun out there?”

Besides trying to recreate their home planet on top of a mountain? They had games, games that were like chess and puzzle games and computer games and games that were kind of like Earth sports only with flying and teleportation, but explaining them would be more trouble than it was worth. Mikey focused on the Frisbee; it slowed down to the point where he could almost catch it. Almost. It slipped from between his hands, and he bent to pick it up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Board games and stuff. We do a lot of gardening.”

“ _Gardening_?” said Noah with wide eyes. “Seriously?”

Kyle caught the Frisbee—Mikey’d been aiming for Justin, but whatever, at least somebody had caught it—before hitting himself in the forehead. “Shit,” he said. “That reminds me. I was supposed to take Alicia to the farmer’s market this afternoon.”

Mikey felt his heart freeze in his throat. Justin just raised an eyebrow. “Why were you supposed to take her to the farmer’s market?”

“I don’t know,” said Kyle, making a face. “We were gonna get some cookies or something. She thinks we don’t spend enough time together or something.”

“What?” Justin snorted. “You’re together every day—what, you don’t see enough of each other on tour?”

“That’s what I said!” Kyle sent the Frisbee flying back towards Mikey, saying, “Alicia’s my girlfriend. You’ve probably seen her around—she’s the bass tech.” The Frisbee hit Mikey squarely in the face. It was too light to do much damage, but it hurt like hell, and his eyes started to water. Kyle winced. “Shit,” he said. “Sorry about that, man, I thought you were gonna catch it.”

Mikey swallowed. “I’m okay,” he said, trying to sound normal. “That must be cool. Having your girlfriend on tour with you.” He tried to focus on the Frisbee, tossing it to Noah without braining anyone. It ended up kind of flying between Noah and Justin, but at least it didn’t hit any innocent passers-by.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” said Kyle grimly. “She’s so fucking demanding these days, though….” He shook his head.

Fuck. Mikey could feel his temper rise. What a total pain, to have an awesome girlfriend who played bass and set up for rock shows like she’d been doing it her whole life and who actually _wanted_ to spend time with you. What a _bummer_ , to have someone who liked you enough to think of fun things you could do together as a couple, even when you clearly didn’t give a shit.

Bunny yowled her agreement, and Justin frowned. “Dude,” he said, “is that your cat?”

“Yeah,” said Mikey. “I better go take her back to my uncles’ place. It was nice hanging out with you, though.”

Kyle nodded. “Likewise. Maybe we’ll see you around.”

Unfortunately enough, he was probably right. “Yeah,” said Mikey. “See you.”

He and Bunny made their way back to the RV. Alicia and Sarah were still playing cards when he passed by, but they lifted their heads to look curiously at him, and Sarah waved. Mikey waved back without stopping to talk; he’d just about used up any social skills he had, and he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to make any more small talk. Later, he promised himself. Later, even if she _did_ have a stupid boyfriend, maybe he’d be able to convince her that he was at least someone she could hang out with and not some creepy pervert. She and Sarah seemed cool—maybe he could be friends with them. Maybe he could even persuade himself to be friends with Kyle. It could happen.

The RV was empty when Mikey opened the door, except for Dixie and Bauer on the folded-up sofa bed. They both were happy he was back; apparently, all the other two-legged people had gone off to do whatever it was they did when they weren’t hanging around with Dixie and Bauer. Bunny sniffed contemptuously and ran over to the cab, where she curled up in the passenger seat.

Mikey flopped down between the dogs on the couch and breathed in and out slowly. Maybe it was time for him to enjoy the privacy, to get on Ray’s laptop and surf the internet and just be himself for a while. The walls of the RV put a little distance between him and the crowds around him—if he could put up a halfway decent shield, he could be enjoying the wonders of YouTube for hours without having to listen to other people’s personal problems or think about his own.

He grabbed a Tab out of the fridge and settled down at the kitchen table. Bauer hopped down off the couch to settle on Mikey’s lap, indignant at being ignored, and Mikey got the distinct impression from Dixie that she’d had just about enough of lavishing attention on Bauer and it was his turn now. Well, whatever, total solitude was overrated, and it wasn’t like Bauer was judging Mikey for anything. Like most animals, Bauer was just thrilled at finding a two-legged person who could talk to him.

Mikey sipped at his Tab and plugged his earbuds into the laptop. He was just about to open Firefox when Bob’s phone rang.

What the hell? What was the point of even having a cell phone if you just left it sitting on top of your TV like a remote control? Mikey pondered just letting it go to voice mail—Bob was a pretty private person, and Mikey didn’t want to overstep his bounds. Well, more than he already had. But then again, what if it was an emergency? Mikey didn’t have a strong feeling about it one way or the other, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything—precognition was always a pretty dicey business.

Bunny’s irritation at being disturbed by the ringtone settled it. Mikey hopped up to answer the phone. “Bob Bryar’s phone. Can I help you?”

“Mikey?” The voice on the other end was surprised, pleased, maybe a little disbelieving, and very familiar. Mikey sifted through his memories to figure out who it belonged to.

“Patrick?” he tried.

“Jesus Christ, Mikey!” Yeah, that was definitely Patrick—he knew that little incredulous laugh. “I didn’t know you were—well, visiting.”

“Yeah,” said Mikey casually. “Uncle Brian thought we could use a little vacation.”

“How long have you been…around?”

Patrick was a smart guy—he obviously knew better than to talk about anything secret over the phone, including where Mikey and Frank and Gerard were now. Mikey’s memories of living with Patrick, already fond, warmed up a notch. “Couple of weeks,” he said. The less specific, the better, he figured.

“A couple of weeks,” said Patrick flatly. “You couldn’t call or anything? I’d—we all would have liked to see you.” His tone was light, but sounded kind of hurt underneath.

Mikey felt like a jerk. “We didn’t want to bug you or anything,” he said, as apologetically as he could. “And Uncle Brian said we should, you know, keep a low profile.”

He could hear Patrick exhaling deeply on the other end of the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s actually kind of why I called.”

Mikey felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “Why’s that?” he asked carefully.

“I wanted to give Bob a heads-up. I know he’s in contact with your Uncle Brian.” There was a pause, with some shuffling noises in the background, and then Patrick continued. “About a week ago, I got a call from a guy at the FBI who called himself Agent Cocker. He said there were some irregularities in your adoption paperwork, and he wanted to know if I had your grandma’s contact information.”

Shit. That couldn’t be good. Best case scenario, the guy found out that their grandma didn’t legally exist—but Mikey didn’t expect that this was a best-case scenario. Who bothered looking into an irregular adoption six years after the fact, when the kids in question were practically (or in Gerard’s case, legally) adults anyway? And what were the chances of them following up on that kind of cold case the precise week that the kids in question reappeared on human radar after six years hiding in the mountains? Pretty slim, Mikey thought. Pretty fucking slim. “What’d you say?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as freaked as he felt.

“What do you think I said? I told him I didn’t have anything to tell him, but I’d give him a call if I found something out,” said Patrick, sounding aggravated. “What do you think? You have any feelings about it? I mean, you know, your kind of feelings?”

“I’ve got a _bad_ feeling.” Shit, why couldn’t he have been dreaming about useful stuff like this all week instead of nightmares about humiliation in front of Alicia? Gerard was gonna flip, and Mikey didn’t even want to think about Bob and Ray, and all the shit they were going to get into because of three stupid kids.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Patrick with a sigh. “Okay, look. Don’t panic—it could still be nothing. I’m gonna make some calls, find about this Cocker guy, and I’ll call you back. You fill Bob and Ray in, okay?”

“Will do,” Mikey said, trying not to hyperventilate. Patrick was right. It could all be nothing. It didn’t feel like nothing, though—now that he knew about it, it felt like a huge, intrusive presence in his mental vision, as big and mysterious and important as his memories of the spaceship crash.

“All right. I’m gonna go, then, but I’ll talk to you later.” Patrick paused on the other end for a moment before saying, “It’s great talking you, Mikey. I’m glad you’re—I mean, you seem to be doing okay. FBI agents aside.”

He was right. Boy, there was nothing like the impending threat of being “confiscated” by the U.S. government to make you realize that you’d really been pretty lucky in life. “It’s good talking to you, too,” Mikey said, and he meant it.

“Talk to you later,” said Patrick, and then he hung up.

That was it, then—the FBI was back, and Mikey was the only one who knew about it. For all anyone knew, the feds could be tracking them right now, tailing Bob or Ray or Frank or….he had to talk to Gerard. He reached out mentally, trying to feel for Gerard’s mind among the crowd. It should have been easy, seeing as how Gerard was the only other Amalthean among a group of humans and Mikey had spent more or less the entirety of his life connected to his brother psychically, but he couldn’t focus enough to block out all the concertgoers and techs and merch people and passersby. He couldn’t really focus on anything.

Bunny jumped off the passenger seat to bump her head against Mikey’s shin. She was ready, she said with a hiss. Just let them try anything. Bauer and Dixie had a less clear idea of what was going on, but they knew enough to be alarmed, and Bauer started barking excitedly.

Mikey sighed and explained it as briefly as he could before searching through Bob’s phone for Ray’s number. They needed to talk.

**

Gerard never got tired of watching Lindsey and her band play, any more than he got tired of watching the Used play. Every show was just a little different, even if they were playing the same songs—they’d say something different, or the crowd would have a different kind of energy, which would make each song fit in some unfamiliar way with the rest of the songs.

Plus, Lindsey was incredible. He didn’t think he was too biased to have a valid opinion on this. He didn’t know anyone else who could play a bass and do a backbend at the same time—he, for one, couldn’t do either, much less both simultaneously. Jimmy pretty much set the tone for the shows, but Lindsey had a distinctive presence no matter what happened on stage—she was always someone doing what she loved and throwing all of herself into it.

Gerard was so crazy about her, he couldn’t even stand it.

After MSI’s set, Lindsey practically skipped off stage and jumped on Gerard, kissing him soundly before pulling back and grinning.

“Getting bored of our show yet?” she asked.

“No way,” he said fervently. “I mean, every night’s a little different, right? And I never get sick of watching you.”

“Aww, thanks.” And then they were making out again and Gerard was trying very hard not to fall over with Lindsey’s legs wrapped around his waist. Fuck, she was really flexible.

A voice from behind Lindsey said, “Oh, good Lord.” Embarrassed, Gerard pulled his mouth away from Lindsey’s long enough to see Kitty rolling her eyes.

“Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey,” said Jimmy mock-sadly. “What have I told you time and time again about fucking groupies?”

Lindsey turned her head, but Gerard could still see the corner of her grin. “See if they’re interested in orgies with you and Chantal?” She tangled one of her hands in Gerard’s hair and scratched lightly at his scalp, and he couldn’t help but lean into the touch. It felt really good. “And he’s not my groupie,” she added.

“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck….” Steve started, before stepping up and cuffing Gerard on the arm like he didn’t even notice Lindsey wrapped around him. “I’m just fucking with you, dude. Where’s your brother, the real short one? Him and me were gonna jam later.”

“Frank? Uh….” It was actually kind of hard to think with Lindsey’s chest, like, right there and her arm draped across his back. “I think he and Mikey and Jamia are at the Brand New merch table.”

“Groovy. Thanks, bro,” said Steve. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Lindsey and said, “Yo, girl, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” before walking off, presumably to the merch table.

“Hey,” Lindsey murmured into his neck, “you want to take off? Go find our tree?”

Gerard couldn’t stop a little bubble of warmth from forming in his chest. They had a tree. They had a place, somewhere that was just theirs, someplace that had memories attached to it that he could share with her. Maybe they were only memories of making out with her this morning in the woods behind the RV, because they’d needed a private place for Lindsey to stick her hands up his shirt, but still. They had a tree. How cool was that? “Let’s go,” he said.

It wasn’t as easy to escape as one might think. On the way out past the parking lot, they ran into a guy who wanted his picture taken with Lindsey, and then a group of girls who wanted her autograph. Gerard felt awkward and out of place, just kind of hiding behind Lindsey, but it was kind of fun watching her in her element, smiling and laughing with her fans like they were old friends. He didn’t even think she was faking it to be polite—she was just good at this stuff, the “talking to people” part of being a rock star. He kind of felt like he ought to be taking notes, but then again, it felt kind of presumptuous to think he might ever need to be good at that kind of stuff. It wasn’t like the Black Parade was going to find a lot of fans on Wolf Mountain. He suspected he was going to end up just working at the Refugee Search Office with Tegan and Sara, and he’d probably never even see Lindsey again after this summer, and oh God he didn’t even want to think about that.

Lindsey bid her last fan farewell with a wave and a smile before turning to Gerard. “Sorry about that,” she said.

He waved a hand, trying to look casual and not like some dweeb who had no idea what to do with himself while his rock star…friend…signed autographs. “No problem,” he said.

“Cool.” She grabbed for his hand again and gave him a bright grin. “Wanna blow this popsicle stand?”

They made it out to the tree without further interruption, and settled down in the cool, dark grass. It was weird—Gerard knew for a fact that there was a whole crowd of people hanging around for Brand New’s set, and he could hear music rising over the trees, but it all seemed very far away. The sky was oddly clear; he could actually make out the outlines of the Milky Way, and the sight reminded him of nights on the mountain. He felt, all of a sudden, like there was something very big and lonely and unknown inside of him, and it made him squeeze Lindsey’s hand all the tighter.

She turned her face towards him, smiling. “Hey,” she said softly, and she leaned in, her breath warm against his cheek. “You want to….?” Instead of finishing the question, she ran a hand over his chest. Even through his tee-shirt, the touch made him shiver.

“All the way?” he asked. His voice sounded higher than usual, kind of squeaky. Shit, he did not feel optimistic about his ability to show Lindsey a good time. He didn’t even have condoms.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she said, leaning back just a little. “I never turned down a little heavy petting, if you’re up for that.”

Touching. He could do that. He could totally do that. “Okay,” he said, still sounding squeaky. “Maybe…maybe that one.”

“Awesome,” Lindsey said with a brilliant grin. She scooted on the ground until she was in front of him, and then she leaned in to wrap an arm around his neck and pull his face close to hers. Her breath was warm on his nose and cheeks. Maybe, if it were still as hot as it had been during the day, it would have seemed stifling, but it didn’t; it felt comforting and somehow completely disorienting at the same time. He leaned in to kiss her.

Gerard had kissed people before, boys and girls, despite what Frank thought. Maybe not a lot, but it wasn’t like he had no experience at all. He’d made out with people under clear summer skies in the grass like this. But he didn’t remember any of those times being as exciting and scary and awesome as this felt, having Lindsey’s tongue in his mouth and her hand on his shoulder, burning hot.

“Hey,” he murmured into her mouth. “Hey, can I touch….” He reached a hand tentatively up her shirt, just to lay it on her stomach, sweaty and sticky under her stained Joan Jett tee-shirt.

She reached her other hand down to wrap around his wrist, pulling his hand up to where her damp bra curved around one of her breasts. _Jesus Christ_. “Be my guest,” she said. The hand on his shoulder went down the neck of his shirt, scratching lightly at his neck and back.

“God, this is so high school,” said Lindsey, pulling away from his mouth to kiss along his jawline down to his neck. “I love it.”

“You clearly had more fun than I did in high school.” His last word broke off in a gasp as Lindsey’s hand crept under the waistband of his jeans and she wrapped her hand around his underwear-covered erection.

She immediately pulled her hand out. “Too much?” she said. Before he could catch enough breath even to decide whether or not he wanted to exchange hand jobs, much less express said desire verbally, she pulled back and said, “Probably for the best. Who knows who’s out there in these woods?”

“You think people are _watching_ us?” Gerard wondered if his eyes were bugging out as much as it felt like they were.

Lindsey laughed. “You never know,” she said, but she didn’t seem too worried. She still pulled herself all the way off Gerard, straightening her tee-shirt and settling down next to him. “Hey,” she said. “Lie down with me.”

He couldn’t bring himself to be disappointed, even if he suspected that Lindsey thought he’d never done anything with a girl before. The grass was soft, the moon was bright, and the night might have been cool but Lindsey’s hand was warm in his.

They lay in silence for a while, basking in a general air of contentment, before Lindsey rolled onto her side and propped herself on one elbow so she could look into Gerard’s face. “So, are you gonna stick around for the whole tour?” she said casually.

“Yeah.”

“What next?” Gerard didn’t even know how to answer that. It must have looked like confusion to Lindsey, because she added, “Well, just…I know you’re not going to school, so, do you have a job or something?”

“Yeah,” he said again. He sat up, and she followed suit. “It’s….” How the fuck did you explain what the Refugee Search Office did? “Um. Yeah. I think I’ll maybe have a job.”

“Cool,” she said, nodding. “So, you guys are super insular and stuff, I get that. But you have a phone, right?”

Well, they had a phone, technically, at the Refugee Search Office. It was publicly listed. But the only people who ever called were crash survivors who’d gotten lost among Earthlings, or government people taking censuses or taxes or whatever, and they did their best to keep the Office separate from the compound, to keep people away from the rest of the Republic. It wasn’t like having a cell phone or something. But Lindsey hadn’t asked about any of that, she’d just asked if they had a phone, so Gerard asked, “Why?”

She frowned, then. “Are you serious? Why? Because I’d kind of like to be able to talk to you after this summer, you weirdo. My job sort of includes travelling all over the country—maybe we’ll come up by where you live sometime and we can hang out.”

Oh. Of course. That’s what people did, if they wanted to keep up a relationship but they were far apart. Was that even going to be possible, though? Uncle Brian had only been able to talk to Bob and Ray a couple times to plan this trip, and Gerard couldn’t imagine that Lindsey would be satisfied with two phone calls a year. There was no reason she _should_ be—it sure as hell wasn’t going to be enough for him. “I don’t…I don’t know. That’s nice,” he said inanely.

Her eyebrows shot up. “What’s nice?”

“I don’t know. That you’d want to….” He shrugged. “I mean, after this summer….” Shit. There wasn’t a way to say, “It’s going to be hard to keep this relationship up without endangering my alien family” and come out sounding like a normal, nice person. This whole thing was such a clusterfuck, and Gerard was self-aware enough to admit that it was pretty much all his fault.

Her face changed, then, like a cloud moving over the sun. She leaned away from him and gave him a stiff smile. “Oh. I got it. So, you want this to just be…a summer thing.” She shrugged. “I get that. I mean, it’s not like I was looking for anything serious, either. And we’ve only been going out, like, a couple of weeks, so, no biggie.” Her tone was light, but you didn’t have to be a mind-reader to see that she wasn’t exactly happy.

“It’s not like that,” said Gerard. “Lindsey, I really, really like you.”

“Likewise,” Lindsey said, her face softening somewhat. “So, what’s the deal?”

“It’s just, it’s really complicated. There are…it’s not just about us, okay, there’s other factors involved here.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me you’ve got another girl in the hills?” Her tone was joking, but her face was serious as she said, “Please don’t tell me you’ve got a girlfriend you’re cheating on with me. I’d rather not have to kill you.”

It just got worse every minute. “No! No, it’s nothing like that.” Maybe…it was stupid even thinking it, but then again, Jamia knew the truth, and that hadn’t seemed to be a big deal so far. “Okay. I have to tell you something. And it’s really important, and it’s really secret, okay?”

“You’re sure you’re not in a cult?” Lindsey said. “Because this sounds like the part where you tell me about, like, the Apocalypse and how your high priest is gonna keep the human race going via drug-fueled orgies or something.”

Despite the seriousness of what he was considering telling her, Gerard couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “Sounds like a fun cult.”

“I’ve been thinking about starting it myself,” said Lindsey with a straight face, looking more relaxed than she’d been since they started this whole line of conversation.

“Seriously, though, this is a really big deal, and you can’t tell anyone, okay? Because, I mean, it’s not a cult or anything, but we are talking about my family here, and it’s not even that I’d get in trouble for telling you—I probably would, but the thing is, it could be dangerous. But you should know the truth, right? Because that’s what people do when they’re in a relationship; it’s all about trust. That’s what I always heard, anyway.”

She shook her head. “Just spit it out already, Gee,” said Lindsey, rolling her eyes. She was smiling again. She had such a warm smile.

“Okay, so, you know when I was telling you about where I’m from, but I couldn’t actually, you know….”

“Tell me where you’re from?” she offered helpfully.

“Yeah. That.” He nodded. He hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake. But honesty was the best policy, right? And he really, really, liked Lindsey. He didn’t like lying to her, and he didn’t like the thought that after this summer, not only would they be split up, but she wouldn’t even know why he had to go. Maybe she’d think he was the kind of person who couldn’t care about people for very long. She already seemed to maybe think he was the kind who would cheat on another girlfriend or boyfriend for a summer fling. “Okay. I want to do that. I want to tell you where I’m from. But you have to promise you won’t freak out.”

She frowned. “Freak out? Why the hell would I freak out? You’re not going to tell me my dad was cheating on my mom and you’re my half-brother or something, are you?”

What? “No,” he said. “It’s not like that. Just…promise you won’t freak, okay?”

“Sure,” said Lindsey. “I promise not to freak. Unless you tell me something really freaky.”

Gerard sighed; clearly, that was the best he was going to get. “Um. So, you know how there are a ton of planets that, you know, people don’t even know about, because they’re too far away?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well. I’m from one of those planets.”

She was silent for a long moment before breaking into a grin. “Ha. I knew it.”

Huh. He had to say, she was taking this a lot better than he’d expected. “You did?”

“Sure. I had a feeling from the start you weren’t from planet Earth.” She reached out to take his hand. “Gerard. Seriously, it’s okay. If you can’t talk about where you’re from, I’m not gonna push you. It’s clearly a big deal to you. We can find a way to deal with it after the tour’s over, right?”

“Wait. You think I’m joking?” No wonder she wasn’t surprised. Her expression said clearly, _Duh, of course I think you’re joking_. Maybe that was the point at which he should have just laughed it off, said, “Yeah, okay, guess I need to work on saying this shit with a straight face.” But this was it, this was his chance—there was pretty much no way in the world that they could negotiate a long-distance relationship after the summer if she didn’t know the truth, and even if it was possible, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be in a relationship where he had to come up with lies and half-truths about where he was from and who he was. He wanted her to know the truth.

“I’m not,” he said, as firmly as he could. “Lindsey, I mean it. I’m an alien. We crash-landed when I was little, and now we live by ourselves out in the mountains.”

“Oh, ha, ha,” she said. She pushed at his shoulder with a frustrated huff. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking!” Gerard could feel his mental shields fading, but he couldn’t focus enough to put them back together, not with Lindsey’s growing irritation jabbing at his mind like a sharp stick.

She rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, Gerard. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me, but don’t act like I’m completely stupid.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” He had to find some way to prove it to her, to prove he wasn’t just some lying douche. It took a moment, but he thought of something—not the best plan, maybe, not the smartest, but whatever. He took off his shoes. “I know it sounds crazy, but....Watch, okay. I’ll show you.” He paused. “Wait, I should tell you—part of the alien thing is that I kind of have super powers. Like, telekinesis and stuff.”

“Sure,” Lindsey said flatly, standing up. “I’m gonna take off. Good luck with all that, uh, alien stuff.”

“Wait!” He stood up, too, frantically grabbing his harmonica out of his pocket. “Watch this.” He blew a short, sharp note, and the shoes flew into the air between them.

Lindsey stared at the shoes, her eyes huge. It didn’t seem like enough, though, so he played just a bit of the chorus of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” making the shoes do a twirly little dance in mid-air. That didn’t seem like enough, either, so he lifted a pile of dead leaves and formed them into an outline of a person. He made the person bend over like he or she was putting on the shoes and then do a flailing dance, his/her leafy limbs making big, sweeping gestures. Finally, he ran out of breath and let them all fall to the ground, lifeless again. “That’s the kind of stuff we can do,” he said. “Aliens, I mean.”

There was a long silence, in which Gerard hopefully studied Lindsey’s blank face for any sign that she understood, that she was okay with all this. Then, Jesus, Gerard heard, and it took him a moment to figure out that it was coming from Lindsey, because he didn’t usually hear people’s thoughts so clearly. But she might as well have been shouting into a microphone, she was broadcasting so clearly to him. _Did he fucking slip me a roofie or something? But when? We’re not drinking anything, and I’m pretty sure date-rape drugs are supposed to make you…unconscious or something, not fucking **delusional**. What the hell did he do?_

Gerard felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. She thought he was a _rapist_? Had he really come across that creepy? He’d thought the little dance was--well, he’d been aiming for “cute” or something, and he’d felt pretty good about his ability not to be a creep after that talk with Frank, too. But now she thought…. “I wouldn’t do something like that,” he blurted out, sounding indignant and plaintive even to his own ears. “Never, never ever. Swear to God.”

Lindsey, who’d raised a hand to her mouth and started chewing on her fingernails, froze and stared at Gerard, and he remembered with sickening sharpness that she hadn’t been talking out loud. “Sorry,” he began, “I didn’t mean to….” But how on earth was she gonna believe that he hadn’t been prying into her head, when she already thought he was lying and probably drugging her and now maybe she thought he’d given her truth serum or he was psychically stealing all her thoughts and oh God she was never going to talk to him ever again.

She blinked a few times and put her hands in her pockets. “I have to go now,” she said, looking at some space a few feet to the right of Gerard’s head. The inside of her mind sounded like a fire alarm, with an undercurrent of _shitshitshitshitshit_.

“Okay,” said Gerard, feeling like someone had nailed his heart to the tree behind him. “Do you want me to….” He didn’t even know how he was gonna finish that sentence. “Walk you back to the MSI bus?” “Call later?” “Go away and never darken your door again?” But he couldn’t even finish, because she closed her eyes and shuddered, and it was all Gerard could do to say, “Okay,” again without crying.

She turned around and gave him one last nervous look over her shoulder before walking away. Gerard watched as she vanished past the trees and tried to concentrate on not tearing tree branches off with his mind. Sometimes when he was really unhappy, shit like that just happened, but this wasn’t the place, not where someone could come up and see him. Somehow being seen hadn’t seemed like such a big deal when he was showing Lindsey, but now Gerard felt like the whole faraway crowd could see him, even though he was all alone.

He bent down to put his shoes back on. His hands trembled while he tried to tie the laces, so he just shoved them down the sides of the shoes and tried not to think about how much his throat hurt.

**

For a moment, all he could do was stare blankly at Mikey, and next to him, Ray was doing the same. He’d expected something bad, when Mikey’d called Ray’s cell phone sounding as urgent as Mikey ever sounded, but to hear his fears confirmed like that….

“Fuck,” said Bob. He tried to think of something more intelligent to add to that, but he couldn’t get past the mental image of those fuckers with the guns, demanding that Gerard and Mikey be handed over like they were bombs or missile codes and not scared kids, holding a gun to Frank’s head. That was as far as he could get before he came back to “Fuck.”

“Well. Okay,” said Ray. He bit his lower lip and looked at the floor for a moment before meeting Bob’s eyes. “What’s the plan?”

Plan? They weren’t exactly the secret agents here. They only really had the one lifeline to fall back on in emergencies. “We call Schechter, and the boys go home,” he said. “What the hell else can we do?” Mikey looked like he didn’t know whether to be relieved or sullen about this idea, but what the fuck ever, Mikey was seventeen, and this wasn’t up to him to decide.

“But see, okay, I was thinking about this,” said Ray. If he was managing to get any thinking done, he was doing better than Bob, who could only stare while Ray threw a hand to one side in a vague, questioning gesture. “How could those guys have figured out that the kids are back? They’re not using their old names, and they’ve been really good about not using their powers, no thanks to me, and I really, really don’t think Jamia gave them away to the feds. The only thing I can think of is that someone saw Brian teleporting when they first got here.”

“So?” Bob wasn’t entirely sure it mattered how the FBI had found out; they were all in deep shit anyway.

“So, if we call Brian and he has to teleport in, won’t that alert them to where the boys are?” Ray folded his hands in his lap, looking solemn. “Right now, all they can know is that the boys have some connection with Pete Wentz, which, let’s face it, they already knew, and that they’re back among Earthlings. It’s scary, sure, but the U.S. is a big place, and we’re already hundreds of miles from Wolf Mountain. How would they even find us?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Bob, feeling his temper rise. “Maybe they’d check the computer file on us.”

“But Brian--”

“He erased those FBI agents’ minds. I don’t remember him saying anything about erasing their computers. You think they don’t have a file on Mikey and Gerard? And when I got arrested, I’m pretty sure they filed a report, especially after the kids broke me out. They might not have filed charges, but I’m pretty sure they’ve got my name down in association with those kids, and a touring rock band’s not actually that hard to find if you have the fucking _internet_. And if they find the boys, we don’t even know what kind of shit will happen. What if they, like, do experiments on them? What if they find Wolf Mountain, and this whole thing turns into an FBI-alien _war_?” Bob could hear his voice getting louder as he went on, but he couldn’t do much to stop it. And he didn’t particularly want to, either.

Ray didn’t say anything for a long moment once Bob had finished, staring incredulously at him. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, “You seriously need to chill. What do you want to do, go hide in the woods? We’re on _tour_ , and all we know is that they’re _looking_ for the kids. We can’t make any moves until we know more, and until then, you need to calm the fuck down.”

“Calm _yourself_ the fuck down,” Bob retorted, and he would have said more, but at that moment Gerard trekked in, looking as depressed as Bob had ever seen him.

Ray frowned and said, “Hey, Gee, what’s up?”

Gerard looked down at the floor, tugging absent-mindedly at his hair with one hand. “Um. So, I think Lindsey and me broke up.”

It seemed like a ridiculously unimportant little drama in the midst of all the other shit going down, but Gerard had really seemed to like her a lot, and Bob managed to calm himself down long enough to say, “What happened?”

Gerard’s mouth crumpled for a moment before he managed to straighten it out again and say, “Well. She was kind of pissed because—I don’t know, I was being weird about not telling her where we’re from. Keeping secrets and stuff. So I told her. About the alien thing, and the super powers, and I tried to show her….I don’t know, I thought she’d be cool with it, but she freaked.”

Bob was so shocked for a moment that he couldn’t even find words to speak. What finally came out was, “You _what_?!” How, how, _how_ could someone as smart as Gerard be so fucking _stupid_?

Gerard’s eyes got huge, and he said quickly, “I don’t think she’s gonna tell anyone, but I wanted to be honest, and--”

Bob had heard pretty much all he needed to. “What the fuck were you thinking?” Clearly, he hadn’t done a good enough job of impressing upon Gerard—on all the boys, really—that summer flings were not the be all and end all of romance and they sure as _hell_ weren’t excuses to blab their extremely dangerous secrets to any girl who gave them the time of day. “Do you even _get_ that you just put all of us—and probably Lindsey, too—in a fuckload of danger?” Gerard’s mouth started opening and closing like a fish’s, but Bob wasn’t done yet. “Do you not even _remember_ when that asshole from the FBI threatened to shoot Frank in the head? Have you stopped for a _minute_ to think about what those guys are gonna do if they ever get their hands on you—or what happens if they find out from you where the rest of your fucking alien commune is? Do you have any fucking idea what the words ‘low-profile’ mean?”

“Hey, what’s going on?” It was Frank.

Bob took a deep breath and turned to look at the doorway, where Frank and Mikey were staring at him and Ray and Gerard. “The FBI’s back,” said Bob tersely. “Gerard thought it’d be a great time to tell his girlfriend about the alien shit. So now of course, she’s freaking out, and someone’s gonna have to do damage control, because I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to talk to Gerard right now.”

“Wait, what?” Frank looked alarmed, now. Had Mikey not told him about the whole “FBI agents stalking them” thing? “Does that mean—do we have to go home?”

“Probably,” Bob said, ignoring Ray’s pissed-off glare. Sending the boys back to the mountain seemed like the only safe option—at least there, there was a whole mob of super-powered aliens who could keep the FBI away with mind rays or whatever.

Frank rounded on Gerard, scowling. “What the fuck, Gerard? This is the first time in years that _I_ get to be the normal one and you go and fuck it all up!”

“Hey, fuck you,” said Mikey flatly. “You told Jamia, like, five seconds after you recognized her.” Shit, shit, shit, Jamia knew, too? One more person for Bob to worry about, excellent.

“Fuck off, Mikey,” Frank snarled.

“No, _you_ fuck off. This whole thing sucks, but--”

“Oh, what, you know all about what I’m going through, because you’re the psychic one, right?” He laughed, bitterly enough that Bob winced even through his own anger. “It’s not like either of you give a shit whether I’m happy or not, or you wouldn’t have dragged me off from everything and everyone I’d ever known to fucking grow alien vegetables in the middle of nowhere with you.”

Ouch. Bob felt a little of his anger wane as it was replaced by a desire to keep the kids from killing each other. Frank looked like he was ready to get into a fist fight with anyone who looked at him funny, and Mikey, who probably _could_ kill Frank just by looking at him, looked like he was seriously considering it. Gerard just looked profoundly, profoundly unhappy.

Ray stepped forward, obviously about to do the peacemaker thing that he did so well. But before he could even begin, Gerard said, “I’m sorry.” His face was pale and miserable, and he rubbed anxiously at his nose before saying, “Really. I’m really sorry. You know I’d never—you guys—I wouldn’t—she won’t--I’m really, really sorry!” With one last, almost desperate glance around the RV, he scuttled out of the door, vanishing into the darkness.

In the tense silence that followed, Frank clenched and unclenched his fists several times while Mikey stared at him, lips pressed together and eyebrows condemning. Finally Frank muttered, “I’m gonna go find Jamia and tell her what’s up.” Gerard hadn’t even closed the door, so Frank didn’t have to go to much effort to echo his dramatic exit, doing Gerard one better by slamming the door behind him.

Well. Whatever anger Bob had managed to hold onto was pretty much demolished at this point, replaced by the feeling that he’d been just about as much of an asshole as he could possibly have been.

“Somebody better go after Gerard,” said Mikey, his narrowed eyes in Bob’s direction making it pretty clear who that somebody should be. “He feels like shit enough as it is, and if he thinks we’re gonna get hurt because of him, he might do something stupid.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Ray with a sigh, sitting on the couch and burying his face in his hands.

Bob hesitated. “Ray….” He’d been a dick to Ray, too, even before Gerard had come in.

Ray waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Go. Go make sure Gerard’s not hurling himself off a building. I’ll handle Frank—we can talk later.”

“Thanks,” said Bob, taking a moment to squeeze Ray’s shoulder. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Ray brought up one hand to cover Bob’s and squeezed once before letting go. “You better, buddy.”

Mikey rolled his eyes and went to the refrigerator, probably to drown his sorrows in Tab. Bob didn’t stay to watch. It was pretty dark out, now, and he didn’t have the first idea where Gerard might go when he was upset.

As it turned out, it wasn’t really that difficult—Gerard was huddled in the tall grass by the side of the road, and Bob just about tripped over him. “Fuck,” said Bob. “Sorry about that.” Gerard just shrugged. Bob couldn’t make out his expression in the gloom, but his hunched posture spoke volumes.

Bob sat down carefully beside him, not wanting to crowd him. The grass was itchy against his bare legs, but at least the night air was a little cooler. “Sorry about blowing up on you like that, too,” he said. “I was freaked. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“It’s okay,” said Gerard in a gloomy, choked-sounding tone. “You were right. I was really stupid.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Bob said, “but you didn’t bring the FBI down on us. Mikey got a call from Patrick Stump today—apparently, some guy over there keeps calling him to harass him about the adoption papers Wentz’s people drew up for you. There’s some kind of information missing, or something.”

Gerard inhaled sharply and looked up from his knees, meeting Bob’s eyes for the first time. “Fuck,” he said solemnly. “Is he one of the guys from before?”

“I don’t know.” They didn’t know that much at all, Bob realized. “Mikey didn’t say.”

Gerard looked away for a moment. “This sucks,” he said in a low voice. “This was supposed to be the best summer ever, and now it’s all fucked up.”

Bob couldn’t help it anymore. He stretched an arm around Gerard’s shoulders, and Gerard leaned in, sighing into Bob’s shoulder. “Hey,” said Bob. “It’s not totally fucked up yet. We just have to be careful. Wait and see what these FBI guys really know—if they know anything at all, besides that your papers are fake. If we have to call your Uncle Brian, we will, but don’t worry about it too much yet, okay?” If only Bob could listen to his own words, he thought wryly. Or Ray’s, for that matter.

“Thanks for saying that, Bob,” said Gerard, still sounding melancholy.

The biggest problem with psychic kids—you couldn’t lie to them, even when you were just trying to protect them. Instead of thinking of something reassuring to say, Bob asked, “So what’s going on with Lindsey?”

Gerard was silent for a long moment, and Bob worried that maybe this wasn’t something he was ready to talk about. Finally, though, he said, “Movies and stuff are such bullshit, you know? Like, I feel like when people say this kind of stuff in movies, like even when they’re coming out and shit, they’re _supposed_ to tell the truth. People are always more mad that they lied than that they’re gay or a spy or an alien or whatever, like they didn’t trust them. But I _told_ her the truth. I didn’t want to lie. And now she hates me, and maybe the FBI’s gonna go after her so they can get Mikey and me, and it’s all my fault for being such a fucking moron.” His voice failed a few times near end, and Bob ached for him. He’d gotten spoiled with Ray, used to knowing that there was always someone he loved and who loved him. He hadn’t worried about being alone or dating or any of that shit for six years.

“Hey,” he said, trying to sound as comforting as he could. It came out sounding kind of gruff, but Bob thought that Gerard would probably get what he meant. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to her, or Ray’ll talk to her or something. I don’t think she’s gonna tell anyone, but we can just check. And I bet you anything she doesn’t hate you.”

“I’m pretty sure she does,” Gerard said.

Bob had seen the two of them floating around the tour for the last two weeks like they were starring in their own old-fashioned romance movie, and he was pretty sure that kind of stuff didn’t go away just like that just because a guy told a girl he was an alien. At least not when the guy was Gerard—because there was no way Lindsey could have spent the amount of time with him that she had without realizing that the kid was a little quirky. “She probably thinks you’re lying, or you’re playing a joke on her or something,” he said. “Maybe she thinks you’re delusional. But I don’t think she hates you.”

“Well, either way, she doesn’t want to see me,” Gerard said dejectedly.

That was life, pretty much---you had to deal with relationships ending, even with people you really liked. Bob wasn’t sure Gerard would be particularly happy to hear that at this point, though, so he just made a sympathetic “Hmm” noise and said, “That sucks.”

“You ever feel like life’s really fucking unfair?” Gerard asked. “Like, all this shit happened when Frank and Mikey and me were kids, but then we found Grandma, and that was supposed to be our happy ending, you know? But it wasn’t for Frank—you heard him, it sucks for him at the Republic. And it wasn’t really for Mikey and me, either, because Grandma died—and what the shit is that all about? I mean, okay, I can do stuff with my mind, but there’s people on Wolf Mountain who can do _crazy_ shit with their minds, moving molecules around and stuff. They fixed Mikey’s eyes. But they couldn’t stop Grandma from dying. They kept zapping the cancer, but it kept coming back, and at the end….” Gerard shook his head. “What the hell’s the point of it all?”

It did strike Bob as unfair that any kids should have to lose their parental figures as often as Gerard and Mikey and Frank seemed to, but that didn’t change the fact that it happened. “Your grandma went through a lot, right?” Surviving a war and moving to another planet counted as a lot in Bob’s book. “I mean, I didn’t know her, but I’d think that would take a lot out of you. Was she pretty old?”

Gerard nodded. “Yeah. She was like a hundred and fifty or something.”

Um. Okay. Well, if Bob had ever wondered whether the folks on Wolf Mountain had a different lifespan from humans, that question was answered. “Well,” he said. “No one can live forever. Not even you guys.”

“I know,” said Gerard with a sigh. “I just miss her, you know? She made me feel…not alone.”

“Hey.” Bob knocked lightly on Gerard’s head with the hand that wasn’t resting on his shoulder. “Dumbass. You’re _not_ alone. What are Ray and Mikey and Frank and me, chopped liver? I mean, Frank’s pissed off right now, but he loves you. We all do.”

Gerard sniffed loudly. “Yeah, I know,” he said, his voice just a tad quavery. “Me, too. I mean, I love you guys. I just…I don’t know, I kind of hurt right now.”

“Hey, that happens,” said Bob, squeezing Gerard’s shoulder a little tighter. “Happens to everyone. But it gets better, I swear.”

“Okay.” Gerard took a deep breath, and even in the dark, Bob thought maybe he looked a little determined. “Okay.”

**

“I think the main thing is to keep track of the money,” Sarah said. “It sounds really obvious, like, _duh_ , of course you keep track of the money, but sometimes, for one reason or another, you’re at the stand alone, and then some emergency happens and you forget to take the cashbox with you. You come back five minutes later—whoops, there goes a whole day’s worth of sales!”

“Jeez,” said Jamia. “Has that ever happened to you?”

“No, but I left it alone once, and it didn’t hit me until later how lucky I was.” Sarah tapped the cash box, as if reassuring herself that it was still there. “Seriously, a lot of people go to these concerts and even more check out the merch booths even if they don’t buy a ticket. You never know what kind of creeps will show up.”

“Yeah, but there’s security and stuff, right?” That had actually been one of the selling points for her parents.

“Sure, but they can’t be everywhere at once.” Sarah peered over Jamia’s shoulder at something, or someone, behind her. “Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?”

She turned her head to look, and sure enough, there was Frank. God, that was weird. Her _boyfriend_. A week ago, for all she had known, he could have been jacking cars, or living in another group home, or still hanging out with Gerard and Mikey’s grandma—their _human_ grandma. But he wasn’t, he was here, and they were dating. The thought of it was enough to make her smile as she waved to him. As he came closer, though, the look on his face made her think something was really, really wrong.

Jamia knew that look—that was Frank’s “I’m gonna get into a fist fight” look. She had no idea what or who had pissed him off so badly, but she thought she’d better find out before he got into a fight with the first person to give him the stink eye. “Hey,” she said, walking out to meet him half-way. “What’s up?”

Some of the raw anger in his face tightened into an irritated tension, and he shot a look at the crowd of people around. “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this?” he said. “It’s a Minnelli thing.”

Which meant it was an alien thing. Ah. “Hey, Sarah,” she called, turning back around, “Can I take off for a few minutes? I’ll be back soon. Frank just has to tell me something.”

“Whatever,” said Sarah with a wave. “I can hold down the fort just fine.”

They walked out to where the gravel of the fairground gave way to tall, unkempt grass. The noise of the crowd was still audible, but from a distance; if they talked quietly, there was no reason anyone would be able to hear them out here. “So?” asked Jamia. “What’s the deal?”

Frank had seemed to calm down on the walk over, but he tensed again. “The FBI’s back.”

It didn’t make any sense for a moment—the FBI? Like, the Federal Bureau of Investigation? But then it hit her, and she swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. “You mean, like ‘scary alien-hunting guys’ FBI, right?” Like the guys who’d threatened to kill them six years ago. Awesome.

“Yeah,” said Frank tightly. “And just to make things even better, Gerard decided this was a great time to tell Lindsey about it. She freaked out. And now who the hell knows who she’ll tell, and of _course_ this had to fucking happen now, when things are actually going pretty good.”

“Is there actually a good time to get chased by the FBI?” Jamia wondered aloud. It was actually one of those things she’d hoped to go her whole life without ever having to deal with.

Frank actually laughed at that. “I guess not.” He sobered quickly, though, and said, “Okay. I can’t really blame Gerard and Mikey for the Men in Black—it’s not their fault the FBI has this hard-on for catching aliens, and I mean, who even knows how they found out? But I mean….” He actually looked sad, now, and Jamia reached out to squeeze his hand reassuringly. He squeezed back and said, “I mean, I love the people on Wolf Mountain, okay? They’ve always been super nice to me, and they didn’t have to take care of me and stuff just because I was friends with Mikey and Gerard. But I don’t want to spend my whole life being the weird human guy who doesn’t even have any super powers. I want to….” He waved his hand in the general direction of the dispersing crowd. “I want to do _this_ , and I can’t do that if I’m stuck back in Alien Utopia.”

“So, wait,” Jamia said. “You have to _leave_?” She couldn’t believe how suddenly this weird-ass, wonderful interlude was ending. As awesome as working at Questlove was, the thought of going back to her normal summer routine was crushingly disappointing. And losing Frank so soon after she’d gotten him back…well, she couldn’t touch that feeling with a ten-foot pole, not yet.

Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know what the plan is.”

“Okay,” said Jamia, taking deep breaths. She could deal with this. There was a rational way to think about this, she just had to set aside the huge fucking anvil in her chest to think about it. “So, you don’t how much the FBI guys actually know, right?”

“Maybe Ray and Bob do,” said Frank. “I don’t. I kind of just walked in on the tail-end of the conversation.” He winced. “Well. It wasn’t really a conversation, more like a lot of yelling.”

“Well, find out,” said Jamia firmly, breathing a little easier. She wasn’t ready to give up on this yet. “I mean, for one thing, we’re moving around. If the FBI doesn’t connect you guys with the tour and just sticks to where you were six years ago, how would they even be able to track you? You’re using different last names, and Ray and Bob have a new RV, right?”

“Right,” Frank said, sounding a little more upbeat.

“And, okay, we haven’t really talked about this a lot, but Mikey’s psychic, right? Does that mean Gerard has some kind of crazy alien powers, too?” At Frank’s nod, she said, “Well, okay then! They’ll probably know when the FBI guys are coming, and they can do something about it. Hell, _we_ can do something about it, convince them they’re barking up the wrong tree. We’re not little kids anymore. We can handle it.” Something else occurred to her, and she added, “And hey, wouldn’t some of the other aliens help? Can’t you call them if things get really bad?” After all, they’d raised Frank and Mikey and Gerard; surely they had to care about them enough to stop them from being kidnapped or killed by the Area 51 dudes. If they’d even let the three of them come on this trip, despite the risks, they must have known how important it was to them. To Frank. “It’ll be okay,” she said aloud, as firmly as she could to convince herself.

The lines of tension in Frank’s face had relaxed, and he was giving her a weird, crooked smile. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Hey, don’t think I was doing you any favors,” said Jamia tartly. “You’re my ticket on this ride, baby! I’m not letting you get away that easily.” She wriggled her eyebrows at him outrageously, feeling weirdly light-headed and giddy. God, she hoped she was right, too.

Frank chuckled at her, wriggling his own eyebrows in response before making a face. “Shit,” he said. “I’m gonna have to apologize to Gerard.”

“Why?” asked Jamia, thought she could probably guess.

“Oh, I pretty much said that he and Mikey abducted me without giving a shit how I felt about it. I knew it was bullshit when I said it, too, but I was really pissed at him.” He sighed. “The worst part is, he’s not even gonna be mad—he’ll just be really depressed about Lindsey dumping him, so I’ll just feel like even more of an asshole.”

“You poor thing,” said Jamia dryly.

“Well, I’m probably gonna have to apologize to Mikey, too, and he’ll be pissed enough for both of them.”

“I’d be, too. Jesus, way to kick a guy when he’s down. Lindsey dumped him over the alien thing?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said with a frown. “Bob just said she freaked and didn’t want to talk to him, so I’m drawing my own conclusions.” He shook his head. “I can’t even believe it. Like, if I had super powers, wouldn’t you think it was cool?”

“If you had super powers, I’d fear for the future of the world,” Jamia said. “But I’d still like you.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close, and she had to admit, “Also, it’d be pretty cool. Would you think it was cool if I had super powers?”

“Are you gonna hit me if I bring up girls I’ve dated before?” asked Frank.

“Um, no.”

“Well, then I’m gonna say that I have actually gone out with girls with super powers, and they were cool, but I think you’re pretty much the coolest girl ever. So if you had super powers, obviously you’d become an unstoppable force of awesome and take over the world.”

Jamia laughed. “The Jamia invasion, it’s sweeping the nation,” she said, not even caring that it didn’t really rhyme.

“You can sweep _my_ nation any time, wink-wink nudge-nudge,” said Frank with an exaggerated leer.

It was funny, Jamia thought. She didn’t really think of herself as a “pretty” girl, not the way some of her classmates were or even the way Greta was. She’d kind of made a niche for herself as the girl who dressed in black and didn’t brush her hair and who spent all her time at underground punk shows and independent coffee shops instead of high school football games and proms. But the way Frank was looking at her, she felt like Marilyn fucking Monroe or someone. “C’mere, you,” she said, grabbing his tee-shirt and using it to pull his face closer to hers. “I’ve got some nation-sweeping to do.”

Frank didn’t seem to have any objections.

**

It was funny, in a terrible way, just how much a day could change. Yesterday, Mikey hadn’t thought things could get much worse than to be surrounded by happy couples while the girl _he_ liked thought he was a creep and was dating someone else. Now, though, with fear hovering like a gray cloud over everything he did, with Gerard’s confused and overwhelmed depression making him ache in sympathy, and with a sullen anger at Frank lodged in his chest, Mikey would have given just about anything to rewind his life by a day.

Bob, sitting across the kitchen table from Mikey and Gerard, raised an eyebrow at their half-eaten bowls of Cheerios. “That all you’re gonna eat?” he asked. “We could go out, if you want. I think I saw a Bob Evans on the way into town.”

Mikey himself wasn’t too hungry. Bad dreams tended to kill his appetite. Still, just in case there was a possibility of snapping Gerard out of his funk, he asked, _What do you think, Gee?_

Without even looking up from his bowl, Gerard sent a wave of unhappiness and nausea at the mere thought of going out for breakfast, so strong that Mikey had to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths before saying to Bob, “No, thanks. We’re not hungry.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bob. He shot a look at Ray, who was pouring himself a glass of milk, and Mikey didn’t think you’d have to be a psychic to know that Bob was saying _Help me out, here._

“We could go for a walk,” said Ray hopefully. “It’s actually kind of nice out right now.”

Bob nodded. “That’s a good idea. This tin can’s starting to reek—it’d be good to get some fresh air.” Leveling a heavy stare at Gerard, he said, “I think you ought to go out today. Just for a little.”

Gerard didn’t even seem to hear, so Mikey said, _Don’t be a douche, man. They’re just trying to help._

Gerard’s sullen unhappiness suddenly took on a tint of guilt, and he looked up, brushing a clump of hair out of his eyes. “I. Okay. We could do that.”

Ray smiled in relief and said, “Awesome. We’ll take a look around.” Mikey could tell the exact moment that Ray remembered the fight with Frank, because his smile faded and he said, a little anxiously, “You think we should wake up Frank and Jamia, see if they want to come?” He glanced over to the inflatable mattress, where they were still curled up in a pile of blankets.

“No,” said Mikey, more sharply than he’d meant to. Whatever. It wasn’t like it was a secret that he was pissed off at Frank. Ray sighed.

“He didn’t mean it,” Gerard murmured.

 _I know_ , said Mikey, and he did know. That made it even worse, in his mind. Frank _knew_ that Mikey and Gerard and the rest of his family on Wolf Mountain cared about him and wanted him to be happy. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to use something as a bludgeon to hit Gerard with, and hitting Gerard where he felt guilty was the fastest way to make him hurt. That was bullshit, as far as Mikey was concerned. Sooner or later, he was going to have to tell Frank about his dreams last night, but at the moment he wasn’t particularly in the mood to make nice.

Gerard echoed Ray’s sigh and said, “Let them sleep. They didn’t get in until real late last night.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bob flatly. He slid out of the booth to stand next to Ray. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go.”

Ray was right—it was nice out. The sun was bright, but in a soft way that didn’t hurt Mikey’s eyes, and it was just hot enough to banish any chills from the night without being uncomfortable. It was a great day for nice, normal people who did shit like appreciating the beauty of nature and the wonder of being alive, but it was a kind of crappy day to be a creepy alien with a broken-hearted brother and a family feud and the threat of government capture looming over his head. Mikey swallowed and tried to feel happy, or at least not overwhelmingly bad. He was trying to be supportive, here.

So, they walked. It was a cool place for a concert—the stage, despite being only minutes from downtown, looked like it was pretty much in the middle of the woods, in a flat clearing where apparently the town had a farmer’s market every other weekend. If Hansel and Gretel had had a rock band, this was where they would have played. Ray, who was obviously going to be nominated for sainthood any day now, was full of random facts about the place and the other bands who’d played there and the time he’d volunteered at a farmer’s market in high school but had wound up knocking over a stand full of tomatoes. Bob occasionally responded with a fact of his own or a joking remark about Ray, but for the most part, Ray’s efforts at getting a conversation going were pretty much wasted. Nobody felt like talking.

It would have been okay if they’d been the only four people out walking this morning. Unfortunately, as they walked past a cluster of buses, they ran into Tim, one of MSI’s techs. Tim frowned as soon as he saw them, and Mikey instinctively threw up a mental shield around himself and Gerard.

“Hey,” said Ray brightly. “How’s it going, man?”

Tim shrugged half-heartedly, saying, “Eh, not bad,” before turning to Gerard. “Dude,” he said. “What the hell happened between you and Lindsey?” Before Gerard could even begin to formulate a response, “I talked to her last night after the show, and I’ve never seen her so pissed, ever. I think she was even crying at one point.”

Whatever color had been in Gerard’s face drained at that, and Mikey felt his own shields waver. That was the problem with trying to shield someone you were close to—their pain became yours, and it was hard enough to keep a shield going when you felt as shitty as Mikey did. “Crying?” said Gerard faintly, and the shields took another hit.

“Yeah, crying,” said Tim, his expression tight and pinched with accusation.

Mikey wanted to say something that would somehow soften the impact of that, but nothing sprang immediately to mind.

“Jesus fuck,” muttered Bob, and he chewed on his beard while giving Tim a dark look.

Ray laughed the fakest laugh Mikey had ever heard and said, “You crazy kids and your tour drama. Well, gotta run, Tim! See you around!” And then—it was actually kind of startling, because Ray was good at respecting people’s personal space—he grabbed both Mikey and Gerard by their arms and speed-walked away, Bob jogging along behind.

When Tim was out of sight again, Ray dropped their arms and winced apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. Peering at Gerard worriedly, he added, “Are you okay?”

 _Uh, not really_ , Mikey wanted to say. Gerard had spent a lot of the last few months being anxious and uncomfortable, but he hadn’t been this downright _miserable_ in a long time. It made Mikey feel like hitting something—when Gerard was upset, Mikey couldn’t get away from it, which made his total inability to make his brother feel better a pain for him as well as for Gerard.

But somehow, Gerard dredged up a smile, albeit a kind of creepy fake one, and said, “Yeah. I’m okay. Just…I kind of think I need to be alone for a while.” He jerked his head towards the woods and said, “I’m gonna go walk some.” He didn’t want Mikey to come along.

It went against the grain with Mikey to let him hurt alone like that—God knew Gerard never let Mikey sulk by himself, even when Mikey really wanted him to—but it wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help, really, so he said, _Okay. Be careful._

“Don’t go too far,” said Bob. “And—here.” He dug around in his pocket to hand Gerard his cell phone. “Keep it on, in case we need you to come back.”

“Will do,” Gerard said with another sad smile. He looked around cautiously, as if to make sure he would avoid running into anyone, before trudging off away from the buses and booths into the oppressively green trees.

Ray and Bob watched in silence as he vanished into the brush, and then Bob exhaled loudly through his nose. “Shit,” he said. “I hate all this fucking drama.”

“He’ll be okay, right?” Ray said nervously. “I mean, being by himself and all that. I hate to think…well, I just wish we knew more. About where those FBI guys are, and stuff.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Bob. He cut a sidelong glance in Mikey’s direction and said, “No offense, Mikey, but I’m looking forward to hotel night and getting you kids out of my hair for a few hours.”

Mikey shrugged. “None taken.” Underneath Bob’s irritation was a sadness and fear Mikey knew way, way too well. It was a shitty way to spend a summer tour.

Plus, Bob and Ray were, like, practically married, and they hadn’t had much time to themselves at all this summer. They hadn’t even gotten enough alone time in the past twenty-four hours to work out their shit from yesterday. Six people in one RV didn’t have that much privacy. And Bob and Ray had put up with a lot. “Why don’t you guys keep walking?” Mikey suggested. “I think I’m gonna head back to the camper.” And then, because he knew it would make them happy, and because sooner or later he really would have to tell Frank about the dream, he added, “Maybe Frank and I can talk.”

“Hey, that’s an awesome idea,” said Ray, beaming. “Maybe this afternoon we can do something fun before the concert. Wii tournament or something?” He nudged Bob with his elbow, and Bob nodded, looking kind of long-suffering.

“Sounds good,” said Mikey, though he privately doubted that Gerard was going to be interested in playing video games or that Frank was going to be in the mood to hang out with them.

He left them chatting with Vikram, one of the security guys, and walked slowly back to the camper, still feeling like the bright sunlight was making fun of him. What he really needed was to sit down and talk with Bunny. Bunny was a problem-solver, and even if she didn’t always grasp the difference between cats and humans—or between cats and Amaltheans, for that matter—she usually had some kind of idea.

But Bunny wasn’t the one who greeted him at the door. Frank was.

“Hey,” said Frank, darting a look up at Mikey before looking back down at his shoes. He swung the door back a few inches, then forward again, then back again.

“Hey.” Mikey pushed past Frank into the RV, pulling the clear mental walls of his shield back up. If Frank thought he was just going to give Mikey a sad face and _feel_ apologetic and Mikey would let him off the hook, he was going to have to think again. Mikey planned on digging out his iPod and completely ignoring Frank.

“I’m heartily sorry for my hasty words and the pain they caused.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at Frank with surprise. If someone had asked him to guess what the next words out of Frank’s mouth were going to be, an apology in the most formal, serious mode in the Amalthean language was pretty far down the list. Crap, he didn’t think he’d _ever_ heard Frank use the formal mode. As a general rule, Frank wasn’t too interested in the more ritualized conventions of Amalthean society. “Where’s Jamia?” he asked, still digesting the apology.

“McDonald’s. We went there for breakfast. She stayed there—she said I needed to work out my bullshit by myself.” Frank’s eyes searched Mikey’s face, hopeful, and Mikey felt the knot of anger in his gut loosen.

“I accept your contrition,” he said solemnly. He was pretty sure he’d screwed up the intonation at the end—it wasn’t like he accepted a lot of formal apologies—but he didn’t think Frank would care.

A smile pulled at the corners of Frank’s mouth, but his eyes were still grave. “Seriously, man,” he said, breaking into English again. “It was shitty thing to say. You guys have been good to me, and it wasn’t like you dragged me kicking and screaming up the mountain or anything.”

Mikey shrugged. “Everybody’s freaked about the FBI thing. I get it. But if you think that means you’re getting off the hook and you don’t have to apologize to Gerard….”

Frank winced. “No. Dude, believe me, I don’t think that.” He looked around the RV, empty except for a pile of sleeping dogs under the kitchen table, and asked, “Where is he, anyway?”

“Off hiding in the woods somewhere.”

“He’s pretty down, huh?” Frank sighed, staring at the ceiling. “I am such a douche. I don’t even know what I was thinking, saying that shit to him.”

Mikey, though he still thought Frank had been a total jackass, had a pretty easy answer for that one. “You were thinking you didn’t want to leave your girlfriend behind and maybe never see her again.” It wasn’t like he didn’t get it. Hell, Alicia didn’t seem interested in even being friends with Mikey, and he still felt sick and unhappy at the thought of never seeing her again. And it had to be even worse for Frank, who’d been cut off from other humans for years. “I don’t blame you. And it’s not like….” He paused, trying to think of the right words. Homesickness poked him sharply in the chest; there was something really nice about being able to handle this kind of conversation psychically. “Okay. So remember when we were at the Smith Home, and you always made us play sports and watch TV in the lounge with the other kids so it was kind of like we had more friends than just you? I know Gerard and I weren’t so good at that. For you. So. Like, I get it, if you’re pissed, or you’re happier here, or….”

“Dude,” Frank interrupted, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Different situations. I knew the other kids at the Home. I think you did fine. It’s just, I don’t know. Since I met up with Jamia again…it’s like she knows where I’m coming from, you know? We’re running on the same wavelength. And it’s never been like that with anyone back home.”

Well. Shit. Now Mikey felt like he was the one who ought to be apologizing. “Maybe we shouldn’t have….do you think it would have been better if you hadn’t come with us?”

“Fuck no,” said Frank with a snort, so promptly that it filled Mikey with relief. “Are you shitting me? I’m the luckiest guy on the planet.” Looking more serious, he added, “Dude. I’m telling you, forget about all that shit I said last night. Being part of your family has been pretty much the best thing ever, and I’d spend the rest of my life planting Amalthean vegetables before I’d let those FBI fucks get you guys. Jamia would totally understand. She could sneak us in Earth music.”

“It’s not just _my_ family,” Mikey pointed out. “It’s _your_ family, too.”

Frank smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I couldn’t have asked for a better one.”

For the first time all day, Mikey felt his mood swing towards ‘happy.’ “Hey,” he said, “Maybe if we deal with this FBI shit…I don’t know, we’re done with school, and it’s not like they really need us up there. Maybe Uncle Brian will let us stay a little longer.”

“Yeah,” said Frank, his expression brightening. “And hey, who says they’re going to find us? They don’t know our new names, and the cops aren’t looking for us this time, and seriously, even if Lyn-Z tells someone, who’s going to believe you guys are actually aliens?”

And there went the happy. “Um. Frank?” Mikey tried to read whether what he was about to say would make Frank mad, but it hurt his head, and besides, it probably fell into the category of privacy violation. He was trying to get better about that. “Um. I had a dream last night.”

Frank blinked. “Yeah?”

“It was like those nightmares I used to have all the time, where they were chasing us up the mountain. Only, these were different guys. And they were chasing you and Jamia.”

“Huh.” Frank’s face seemed frozen in a vaguely concerned frown. “That…kind of sucks.”

Mikey nodded. “I know. I wanted to call Uncle Brian, but I thought…okay, you know he’s probably gonna make us go back home, and I wanted to tell you, first.”

“Fuck it,” said Frank. “Call him. If those assholes do to Jamia what they did to me, I will fucking…I don’t even know what. Something really stupid, probably.”

“They’re not going to,” Mikey said firmly. “It’s not gonna happen.”

Frank raised an eyebrow and said, “Did you dream that, too? Or is it one of your feelings?”

“Dude,” said Mikey. “It’s not gonna happen because we’re not gonna _let_ it happen. We’re family, right? We take care of each other. Nobody messes with my family.”

Frank laughed, sounding a little startled, before tilting his head back to grin admiringly at Mikey and said, “You know, man, you’re actually kind of badass when you go all Godfather on me.”

“Thanks.”

“Speaking of taking care of each other,” said Frank, “just where in the woods is Gerard? How much you want to bet he’s blaming himself for everything ever and writing depressing lyrics?”

“No bet,” Mikey said. “He really fucking liked Lindsey, and now he feels like a total asshole.”

“Man.” Frank shook his head. “That sucks. I guess I’m gonna…go do the whole apology thing.”

“Are you gonna break out the whole formal mode?”

“Why?” asked Frank. “You think I should?”

“Eh. Probably not worth it. Gerard’s not even mad at you.” Mikey wiped some sweat from his forehead and wiped it on his pants. One thing you could say for Wolf Mountain, he thought, was that it didn’t get so fucking hot all the time. The woods were probably shady, though. And it wasn’t like Frank was going to find Gerard anytime soon without Mikey’s help. “I guess I could come with you,” he offered. “For moral support.”

“That’d be cool,” said Frank with a small, tired smile. “Man. Some vacation, huh?”

Though it was pretty much a rhetorical question, Mikey thought about it for a moment. It didn’t feel like a vacation at all, anymore. It felt like some divine finger poking itself in Mikey’s face, saying, “Here! All this—the relationships and the music and the travelling? This is what you can’t have, and fuck you for even trying.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Some vacation.”

**

“Are you _sure_ this is where the X-Files guys are?” said Nate for the thousandth time.

Victoria couldn’t really blame him. They’d been parked outside a plain brick office building for the past ten hours, only shifting their position when necessary to avoid suspicion, and honestly, nothing about it screamed “government conspiracy.” It just looked like an office building.

“Believe you me, Nate my boy,” said Gabe, reaching a hand out to scratch at Nate’s hair like he was a puppy or something. Not that bad a comparison, really. “I’ve got ways. Ways and means, baby. This is the place.”

By “ways and means,” Victoria thought he probably meant that he’d had Alex or Ryland hack some government computer in search of Agents Palmer and Viglione. At least, she hoped that was what he had done—the next most likely possibility was that he’d gotten high, come up with some shit about the most secret things being hidden in plain sight, and picked this place randomly out of a phone book.

Nate rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. “Are we ever going to get to, you know, actually bounty hunt again at some point?” And before Gabe could object, he added, “No, that last dude didn’t count. He wasn’t running, he just forgot he had a court date.”

“What, you haven’t enjoyed running errands for Pete Wentz?” asked Ryland wryly. The computer was apparently doing something he disagreed with, because he frowned at it and pounded the enter key a few times.

“Dude. _Dude_ ,” said Gabe, “quit with your complaining. I mean, first off, Pete totally financed this whole deal. He’s like the Cobra godfather. And second, _aliens_. You gonna get a chance to tangle with the Men in Black and totally save some good E.T.’s anywhere else? I don’t think so!”

“Okay,” said Victoria, “but what are we trying to accomplish by just sitting outside their office? We don’t even know what this Cocker guy looks like, so it’s not like we can follow him or anything.” God, she hoped the FBI didn’t decide to arrest them over this. They’d been pretty lucky so far, but who the hell knew when some FBI guy was going to look out the window, notice the big purple van, and get them thrown in federal prison on some national security-related charge? They could’ve at least gone for a less conspicuous vehicle, for God’s sake.

On the other hand, Pete and Patrick and Joe and Andy had seemed to genuinely care about those kids. Victoria had more or less blocked the whole “being held at gunpoint” thing out of her memory, but she definitely remembered riding around in the Cobramobile with Pete and Patrick and a tension so thick you could choke on it, and the tearful goodbyes on the mountain. Whether the kids they’d taken in were aliens or not, whether they were even actually kids or some kind of body snatchers in disguise, Victoria didn’t like it when people fucked with her friends.

“Oh, oh….” Ryland said excitedly for a moment, before the computer rebelled again. “Motherfucker!” he said. “Goddamned government security protocols!”

“Gimme that,” Alex said, grabbing the laptop. He turned to Victoria and wiggled his eyebrows. “Be prepared to be wowed, because I’m gonna work a little magic here.”

“I’ll give you ‘magic,’” Ryland grumbled. He flicked Alex’s ear irritably, and Victoria sighed. She loved her guys, she really did, but sometimes it was like riding around in a van with her annoying younger cousins all day, every day.

“Aha!” said Alex, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Voila! I give you Jarvis Cocker of the FBI Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena.” Victoria frowned and leaned in closer to avoid the glare on the screen, and Ryland did the same on the other side. The guy on screen didn’t look much like the sinister badasses from six years ago—he kind of looked like a maudlin accountant, with big glasses and a shabby suit. Of course, appearances could be deceiving, thought Victoria. Gabe, for instance, looked like an extra in a Mr. T motivational movie, and he’d done a lot of shit Mr. T probably wouldn’t have approved of.

Ryland grabbed the laptop back and started clicking rapidly. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully. “So, Cocker works with a dude named Brian Molko, they’re both from the U.K.—what, you have to come all the way to America to hunt aliens? What the fuck ever. Um…let’s see, says they’re both out of the office on a case right now.”

“Shit,” said Nate from the front. “You don’t think the case they’re on is Wentz and Stump’s kids, do you?”

“Well, I don’t know, Nate.” Ryland never liked to be interrupted mid-search. “Why don’t you let me finish reading this, and I’ll tell you?”

“Hey, once you’re done, tell me where to drive,” said Gabe. “This place is really starting to harsh my groove.” He leaned over the dashboard, tilting his head, and Victoria could clearly imagine the frown on his face. “I think some dude’s staring out the window at us.”

“Can’t you just drive around the block?” asked Ryland irritably. “I think I’m actually—oh, wow.”

“Oh, wow, what?” Not that sitting around in the hot van while Ryland fucked around on the computer wasn’t awesome, but now Victoria couldn’t even see what he was doing. God, how she missed the straightforwardness of just chasing some guy down, or even flirting with him (or her) to distract him so that Gabe or Ryland or Alex could grab him. This government conspiracy shit made her uncomfortable on top of the boredom.

Alex grabbed the laptop back from Ryland. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “That is super fucking weird.”

“What is?” Nate turned all the way around in his seat, craning his neck for a peek at the screen.

Alex rotated the computer in his lap, pointing. “Look,” he said, pointing at a line of text on the screen. “We’ve got parents, school records, work history on this guy, right? But check this out.” He switched to a new tab. “The people this file says are his parents? They don’t exist. Okay, like, there are people with those names, but not at the times and places Agent Cocker’s parents are supposed to be living.”

“It gets better!” said Ryland, reaching over to click to another tab. “He’s supposed to have gone to Oxford, right? But the university has no records of him. And there’s no credit history or car payments or any shit like that until he and Molko started working for MI-5 in 1999.”

“So….” Victoria said, wondering just how that was going to affect their investigation, “it’s a fake name?”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Uh, duh.” Turning eagerly to Alex and Ryland, he asked, “What’s the deal with his partner, Molko? Did they leave MI-5 at the same time?”

“It’s the same thing,” said Alex with a nod. “Technically, they both have a past, but they might as well not have existed before 1999.”

“Witness protection?” suggested Nate.

It wasn’t a bad thought, but when you were dealing with secret government agencies, the possibilities got more complicated. “Maybe they’re undercover,” said Victoria. “The FBI’s got to _know_ that their IDs are fake, so it’s got to have something to do with their jobs.” Something occurred to her, and she added, “Maybe all the alien-hunters have protected identities. I mean, if this agency is so hush-hush, maybe they’re all operating under fake names.”

“Good thinking,” said Alex, pointing finger-guns in her direction. “Lemme just….whoa!” The laptop slid to the floor as the van suddenly accelerated. “What the fuck, Gabe?”

The tires squealed against the pavement, and they sped around a corner, sending Victoria, Alex, and Ryland sliding off their seat in the back and pushing Nate up against the window. “Sorry, Cobras,” said Gabe, not sounding too sorry. “I think we’ve been made.” He gestured towards the rearview mirror, and Victoria turned her head; behind them, a black-suited man with curly hair was standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, frowning after them.

“A little warning next time, huh?” muttered Nate, settling back into his seat and fastening his seatbelt. Gabe just laughed and ruffled his hair.

Victoria straightened her dress, which had slipped over one shoulder, and bent to pick up the laptop. It seemed okay, and she took advantage of the rare opportunity she’d been granted to click back over to the tab with the personnel files and look up their old friends Palmer and Viglione.

She didn’t even have to click away from their profiles to know that something was different. There were names, details, dates. Palmer had a couple of drunk and disorderlies on her record and Viglione had been arrested once for indecent exposure and disturbance of the peace. They had recommendations, psych reports. In short, they looked like real people in a way that Cocker and Molko didn’t.

Victoria passed the computer to Alex, knowing that he’d see just what she had. And sure enough, after a minute he frowned. “Huh,” he said. “So, I guess it’s not an alien hunter thing. So what is it?”

“Jesus,” said Ryland. “Maybe you were right, Nate. Maybe it’s witness protection.”

Gabe snorted derisively. “Can you even be in a top-secret government agency if you’re in witness protection?” he asked. “Shit, most of ‘em won’t let you in if you’ve smoked pot—why would they let you in if you’ve got killers or drug dealers gunning for you?”

“Undercover?” Nate suggested.

“Yeah, sure,” Alex said frustratedly, “but these aren’t the files your local police department would get if you entered these names, these are files on the FBI’s secure servers. Wouldn’t they have the real information on their own agents?”

An idea struck Victoria with a weird, disbelieving kind of inspiration. She closed her eyes for a long moment, thinking back to a warm summer night when she’d watched a little man knock out two armed FBI agents, apparently just by looking at them. It was crazy, really, but then, the whole thing was kind of nuts. “Hey,” she said, opening her eyes. “This might be totally stupid, but….” She hesitated. She felt kind of goofy even thinking what she was thinking, much less saying it out loud.

“What?” asked Ryland. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. “Come on, Vic. Say it.” Alex and Gabe and Nate were all looking at her, and suddenly she felt even stupider just sitting there.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ve been assuming that the FBI knows these are fake IDs, right? But what if they don’t? You remember when that alien guy, the kids’ uncle or whatever, appeared out of nowhere and knocked those agents out, and then he said they wouldn’t remember what happened?”

Gabe’s eyebrows drew together in a thick thoughtful line. “Yeah,” he said, as if he already had an idea where Victoria was going with this.

“Well, what if Molko and Cocker are the same way? What if they can just make people _forget_ that they don’t have a past? I mean, their personnel files wouldn’t get checked all the time, so mostly they wouldn’t have any problems with a fake profile, so maybe they just--” She waved a hand, feeling irritatingly inarticulate. “Wipe out your memory every time you figure out there’s a problem?”

“So…what, they’re aliens, too?” asked Nate, looking more disgruntled than disbelieving.

Alex, though, was smiling. “What better place for a couple of aliens to work? They can make sure that nobody figures out about them, _and_ they can use the FBI’s resources to find people from their planet. Kill two birds with one stone.”

“But I guess the question is _why_ ,” said Ryland with a frown. “I mean. Are they friend or foe?”

There was a roar and a screech as Gabe sent the Cobramobile accelerating forward again. “Either way,” he said, “Pete’s gonna want to hear this.”

**

“Hmm,” Brian said, concentrating on the music blaring out of a passing hipster’s earbuds. Rather generic-sounding, but catchy. “D’you know, I think I could make a hit pop song.”

Jarvis looked up from examining the back of a CD case. “What, do you mean writing one, or performing it?”

“Why not both?” It had taken a while, but Earth music had replaced Amalthean music as the soundtrack in Brian’s head, and if these children could produce it, what was stopping him?

“Bit old, aren’t you?” Jarvis put the CD down, scowling as if it had personally offended him. “I mean, kids these days seem to like their pop stars young and hot enough to get away with hideous hair and even worse tattoos. I don’t know if an old man like you or I could make it.”

Fuck Jarvis. It wasn’t like either of them were that old, and Brian thought he did quite well for himself in the appearances department—better than Jarvis, who made his own clothes out of scraps and thus was frequently mistaken for some kind of unstable panhandler. “Isn’t that profoundly shallow of you,” he said with a sniff.

Jarvis shrugged. “I never said I was deep.” He picked up another CD. “Whatever. Little makeover, maybe you’ll be the next big thing on American Idol. Dream big, Molko. Dream big.”

Jarvis could mock as much as he liked—Brian knew very well the man stayed up late playing Dance Dance Revolution. Jarvis was the one who actually watched American Idol. “As a matter of fact, you’re wrong,” he said archly. “I think the glam androgyny thing is coming back a bit, now, and I’ve certainly listened to enough of this pop stuff over the years to make it myself.”

“Right.” Jarvis gave him an unimpressed look over the top of his glasses. “So I’ll just tell Monáe you’ve given it all up to be a pop star, shall I? And she can pass it on to the Emperor.”

Well. If Cocker was going to be such a _bastard_ about it, Brian could be serious. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “Besides, I think the Emperor could be quite the star himself, if he ever chose to be.”

“Mmm,” said Jarvis through a close-lipped, fake smile as he waved faux-cheerily at a passing black-clad teenager, who was looking at them with a vaguely baffled expression. “Ix-nay on the Emperor-ay.” _You’re really quite sad_ , he sneered. _He dumps you on this planet simply because you’ve gotten too close to him, ruining your career, and your crush on him is probably still visible from the homeworld._

 _Shut it_ , said Brian, mustering a smile of his own. The kid, a heavily-tattooed young gentleman with nothing going on in his head besides the chorus of a rather repetitive heavy metal song and a constant refrain of _shit, it’s hot,_ gave them one more confused look before wandering off. Brian sighed. If only he’d taken a moment to pack some more casual clothing as well as his work suit. If only he was skilled enough at teleportation to pick his weekend clubbing outfit out of his closet at home and bring it to himself mentally. As it was, he and Jarvis did seem to be the creepy old men in suits hanging out at a musical event for young people.

Ah, well.

They’d been travelling with the tour for few days, now, but they hadn’t yet managed to approach Bryar or Toro without the interference of security. Their mental abilities had thus far managed to prove that Helena’s grandsons were there (they were, as of yet, less sure about Schechter), but not only had the boys remained completely elusive to Jarvis and Brian’s more earthly senses, they must have also developed some quite strong mental shields, since all telepathic scans for the boys themselves had failed.

At least the music was pretty good. Brian might have only said it to piss Jarvis off, but he really did think he could do a passable job singing or something, and he certainly had enough of a taste for Earth pop punk--or alternative or whatever they called the genre or genres of the bands on this tour—to enjoy himself. If only they could find the fucking false heirs….

Brian allowed himself a moment of imagining his triumphant return to the Empire, dragging Helena’s grandsons and that traitor Schechter and probably a whole new tributary planet behind him, but only a moment. He’d thought about it so much over the years that it seemed more like a pipe dream than anything actually likely to happen, and he’d learned not to get his hopes up. So he banished all thoughts of the Emperor’s grateful smile from his mind (and ignored Cocker’s mental snicker) and approached another tattooed and pierced young man, this one with a businesslike air suggesting that he actually knew what was going on. _A tech_ , thought Brian.

“Excuse me,” he said. “My name’s Brian. I’m trying to find some friends of mine. Gerard and Mikey Minnelli? They’re travelling about with their uncle—he techs for the Used.”

A series of images popped up in the man’s head: two dark-haired boys (undoubtedly Gerard and Mikey), a blond, bearded man, an attractive and well-kept recreational vehicle. But as quickly as the images appeared, they were covered by a shell of suspicion and nervousness, and the young man said, “Sorry, man. Can’t help you.”

 _No use in pushing it_ , said Jarvis. _If he knows them, he’s more likely to warn them the more you frighten him._

 _I know_ , Brian said impatiently. To the kid, he said, “Thanks anyway.”

He nodded jerkily at Brian and Jarvis and said, “Good luck,” before turning around and walking across the street to the hotel parking lot where the bands’ buses were parked. He turned his head to give them one more nervous look before vanishing into a bus.

“Fuck a duck,” said Jarvis irritably. “So close, and yet so far.” _And we had better find them quick, before they have their security contact local law enforcement and we have to break our cover. You’re sure we couldn’t just grab them backstage at a concert, deal with the fallout later?_

Brian shook his head. There was no way even he could mindwipe that many people at once. If one person escaped with memories intact, then whoops! So much for fourteen years of keeping a low profile! They’d probably call in the army, and any plans of the Emperor’s to expand his realm of influence would be immeasurably complicated. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find them. Just be patient.”

Jarvis snorted. “You think I’m worried about finding them? it’s just a matter of time, and if you think I’m gonna be outsmarted by a couple of kids, you’ve got another think coming.” Under Jarvis’ usual level of resigned cockiness, though, Brian could sense an anxious uncertainty. _It’s what comes afterwards that worries me_ , Jarvis added grimly.

 _Don’t be silly_ , said Brian. _We’ll go home, get promoted—maybe get ourselves nice Imperial ministry jobs, if we want them. And if your old family’s broken up, or it’s not a good fit for you anymore, you can find a new one. Hell, maybe even I’ll find one._

Jarvis didn’t look too reassured, and Brian couldn’t blame him. He could see a future in which the rebellion was stamped out, in which the Empire annexed Earth to use as a starting point for exploration and colonization in this galaxy. For the life of him, though, Brian couldn’t see a place for himself in that future. Just a vaguely sad murkiness.

But then, seeing things to come had never been something that either Brian or Jarvis had ever been any good at, and in the end, their usefulness to the Empire was more important than their own careers, so Brian picked another kid out of the crowd to scan his mind for any useful information.

Brian and Jarvis weren’t there to have a good time, he reminded himself. They had a job to do. Everything else was secondary.

**

 _wanna hit the town? i saw a sweet little vintage clothes store on our way in, we should check it out._

Hmm. Look for funky old shoes with Sarah or have another fight with her boyfriend? It was a tough decision. _Totally_ , she texted back. _just give me like half an hour._ Just because she wasn’t going to mope around all day about her jackass boyfriend, there was no reason she couldn’t ream him out before she left.

 _Cool_ , texted Sarah. _Im getting in some quality internet time anyway. I love hotel nights!!_

Ordinarily, Alicia would have agreed with her. A chance to take a nice shower, to sleep in a clean bed, to hang out with the benefit of consistently working air conditioning and a pool just six floors down—what wasn’t to like?

But, as usual, shit was getting unpleasant with Kyle. He’d been super excited about the opportunity for sex in an actual bed while Noah and Justin were hitting the buffet downstairs, but honestly, Alicia really had no desire whatsoever to sleep with Kyle at the moment. So they’d had a tense, passive-aggressive little bitchfest and slept as far apart as two people in a queen bed could. They’d planned on exploring the town together, but Kyle had been gone when Alicia woke up in the morning, which was like three hours ago now. He hadn’t even left a note.

It wasn’t even like she really wanted to spend her day hanging out with him and Noah and Justin, but it was the principle of the thing—just how many times was he gonna blow her off like this? She dialed his number and tapped impatiently on the nightstand while it rang.

Finally, he answered and said, “Hey, babe.”

“Hey,” said Alicia, turning on the mock sweet. “I noticed you went out this morning. Does that mean we’re not gonna go walk around the town today?”

There was a long pause at the other end before he said, “Um. No, I--so, the guys and I found this arcade downtown. You should totally come, it’ll be fun. This place is awesome.” He did a pretty good “earnest enthusiasm” voice, though it wasn’t quite enough to cover up his “annoyed guilt” voice at the beginning of the sentence.

He’d obviously forgotten all about their plans. Typical. She was pretty sure there was a time she would’ve found his improvised invitation funny, even charming, but now, being an afterthought to him just grated on her nerves. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. “I’ve got my own plans. If I just sat around waiting for you to call every time you blew me off, I’d never do anything.”

“Jesus Christ, Alicia.” Kyle’s “annoyed guilt” voice was now just his “annoyed” voice. “If you’re just gonna bitch about it, I’ll come back and we can walk around the damn town by ourselves, all right?”

“Don’t do me any favors,” said Alicia, abandoning any attempt at even fake sweetness. “Have fun with the guys. Maybe you can share a room with them tonight. Oh, and by the way, if you’re late for soundcheck set-up again, I’m letting Ray beat the crap out of you.” With that, she hung up the phone, still steaming. It rang again seconds later, but she turned it off as soon as she saw the name “Kyle” on the screen.

Whatever. She didn’t know why she didn’t just listen to Sarah and dump him. She didn’t even know why he wanted to date her instead of Noah and Justin, since he seemed to prefer hanging out with them to doing _anything_ but sex with her. She’d been in relationships that went from being friends-with-benefits to real relationships, but could you go the other way around? She didn’t think so. And she wasn’t really sure she _wanted_ to be friends with Kyle.

She had to cool off before going shopping with Sarah—if she went while she was this pissed off, she’d just be sullen and angry the whole time and ruin the whole thing for Sarah, too. She had to get out of this stupid hotel room. She grabbed her purse and left.

After riding the elevator up and down lost its appeal, she sat on the couch in the hotel lobby for a few minutes to watch the news before going outside to walk around the block. The weather looked pretty much like she felt. The air was so muggy and oppressively hot that it weighed on her chest and made breathing uncomfortable, and the sky was covered with dark, grim-looking clouds. The town looked like a gray collection of run-down parking garages. Ugh, ugh, ugh. This was going to be such a crappy day, she could already tell.

As she crossed the street to the next block, two men in dark suits lounging in front of the convenience store turned their heads to stare at her. She slowed down. Should she motor on past them, or turn around? She so was not in the mood to deal with any more creeps today.

But she’d hesitated too long. While she paused, the shorter man gave his friend a sharp look and headed in Alicia’s direction. “Excuse me,” he said, “Are you travelling with the touring bands staying in the Holiday Inn?” He had a slight, smooth British accent and a pretty smile.

“Why do you want to know?” asked Alicia warily.

“Well,” said the man, “some friends of mine are travelling with the Used, and we were supposed to meet up with them, but the cell phone number they gave me isn’t working. I thought perhaps you might know them—Mikey and Gerard Minnelli?”

Bob and Ray’s nephews? Alicia wasn’t exactly close with them, but she was familiar enough with them to know what their last name wasn’t Minnelli, it was Way. Maybe the man was looking for someone else, but how many brothers named Mikey and Gerard would there be hanging around, much less travelling with the Used? No, they were clearly looking for the Mikey and Gerard staying with Ray and Bob, but what kind of friends didn’t know their friends’ last names?

Something smelled fishy. Who the fuck were these dudes, anyway? The other guy, who’d been leaning against the window of the convenience store, pushed off with his elbows and stared at her through his huge glasses, giving her the creeps. Now, Mikey was admittedly a kind of strange guy, and rumor around the tour was that Gerard had some girlfriend up in the mountains and that was why he and Lyn-Z from MSI had broken up, but they’d both been nice enough to her, at least enough that she wasn’t about to give away their whereabouts to a couple of potential perverts before finding out if Gerard and Mikey even knew them.

“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “Can’t help you.” Giving them what she hoped was an apologetic smile, she walked quickly past the convenience store. Behind her, Tall Suit Guy said something cutting and English-sounding to Short Suit Guy, but she didn’t turn her head to look at them.

As soon as she rounded the corner, she sped to nearly a run, alternating between a jerky speed-walk when there were other people around and a jog when the sidewalk was clear. She went all the way around the block that way, checking at the corner to make sure the men in suits didn’t see her, and then she ran back into the hotel lobby, breathing hard.

Matt, the Used’s bass tech, was sitting with a couple of MSI’s crew in front of the TV (still playing CNN), and he frowned curiously at her as she leaned over, hands on her knees, breathing hard.

“Hey, Alicia,” he called. “You okay?”

Alicia debated with herself briefly whether or not to tell him about the creepy guys, and eventually decided on “not,” at least for the time being, until she had a better idea what the deal was. “I’m cool,” she said. “You know where Mikey Way is?”

Matt nodded. “Pretty sure he and Gerard are holed up on the fifth floor. Shit, what room number is that? Across the hall from mine?” He looked to the MSI techs.

“504?” offered Tim, looking vaguely pissed.

“That’s the one,” said Matt.

Alicia nodded, slowly catching her breath. “Cool. Thanks.” Her legs felt wobbly as she made her way over to the elevator, and as soon as the doors closed she leaned against the elevator wall for a minute, collecting herself, until she reached the fifth floor.

She knocked timidly at the door of 504, not sure whether she wanted Mikey or Gerard to answer. Gerard had never shown any signs of standing around and staring creepily at non-Lyn-Z people; on the other hand, as far as she knew, Mikey wasn’t going through a horrible break-up and thus might be easier to talk to. Neither was a great option, and for a moment she wondered if she wasn’t making too big a deal out of what might turn out to be nothing. She’d run into a bunch of weirdos on tour before, and nothing worse than a little scuffle with security had ever happened. Maybe she should just go back to her room and call Sarah….

Too late. The door opened, and Mikey Way stood there, staring at her.

He blinked slowly, looking like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Honestly, she couldn’t blame him—she wouldn’t really expect herself to be hanging out at his door, either. She was kind of surprised about it, herself.

“Hey,” he said. He reached a hand up to scratch at his head and smiled. He had kind of a goofy smile, she thought, but it looked real, not just polite, like he was really happy to see her. It was maybe a little cute, but only a little.

Whatever. That was irrelevant, anyway. “Hey,” she said. “Do you know a couple of British guys? Um, white, with dark hair, go around wearing suits all the time?”

Mikey’s smile froze. “No,” he said. “Why?”

“Okay, I thought that was weird. See, I just ran into them, and they said they were friends of yours, and they were looking for you. They called you ‘Mikey Minnelli,’ though.”

“Did you tell them where I was?” And wow, that was a new look—as far as she could tell, Mikey did a lot of staring into space and looking around awkwardly, but she hadn’t seen him look like this, sharp and alert and serious. Fuck, she thought. That couldn’t be good.

“No. I don’t know, I don’t usually tell strangers that kind of shit,” she said, watching Mikey closely to see how he reacted. She wondered what the deal was—were the British dudes cops? Or drug dealers? Holy shit, maybe Mikey really was a huge creepazoid.

Mikey nodded, the sharpness already fading from his expression. He looked like his mind was about a million miles away. “Thanks,” he said, closing the door. He wasn’t even looking at her.

“Wait,” she said. Maybe asking about this was a bad idea, and if he freaked, she promised herself she wouldn’t push, but fuck, she had a right to know what was going on, right? These were her friends, her bosses, her shitty boyfriend who might get caught in the middle if Mikey and his brothers were dealing coke or something. This was her life, too. “Who were those guys?” she asked, and it came out maybe a little stronger than she’d intended, but she couldn’t exactly take it back.

He was silent for a long moment, frowning out into space as if he was having a disagreement with an imaginary friend. Finally, he wet his lips nervously with his tongue and sighed. “Can you keep a secret?”

Jesus, clearly it was something bad. No guy in the history of the world had ever said that without it being bad—well, actually, no guy had ever actually said it to Alicia in real life, but it seemed like the kind of thing that always came before some big, scary revelation. This was what she’d asked for, though, and maybe…she’d gotten a pretty sketchy vibe from those guys. Maybe whatever Mikey was into wasn’t his fault. She hoped not, for Ray and Bob’s sake. Either way, she wanted to know. “Sure,” she said. “I’m awesome at keeping secrets.”

Mikey smiled a little at that, not the big toothy grin from before but a dry little half-smile. “Okay,” he said. So, if I told you that Gerard and me are sort of…in trouble with the government—not ‘cause we did something, but just because of where we’re from, what would you say?”

Wait, what? Where they were _from_? “Huh?” she asked, her brain whirring into a confued overdrive. “Are you and Gerard illegal immigrants or something?”

His smile grew by just a tiny fraction of an inch, and he shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

Well, she certainly hadn’t expected _that_. She didn’t really even know what to say. “Okay,” she said, trying to think of a smarter way to respond than that. “Wait, you and Gerard?” she asked. “What about Frank?”

He looked up towards his forehead and bit his lip, looking very thoughtful, before saying, “We’re adopted. Frank…he knows about us, and he’s like our brother, but he’s not from where we’re from.”

“Do Bob and Ray know?” asked Alicia, feeling like a moron, but unable to think of anything better to say. This was…well, it was _weird_. Bands getting completely wasted and trashing a hotel room, kids trying to steal CDs from the merch tables, brawls, all that was the kind of legal trouble she was used to seeing on these tours. But illegal immigration? The kind that guys in suits from government agencies asked about? That wasn’t something she’d ever had to deal with.

Mikey nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “They know.” He gave her another intense look, not as sharp but just as serious. “You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?”

It wasn’t really like it was any of her business, anyway, right? “Of course I won’t,” she said, feeling kind of, well, _honored_ that Mikey would trust her with such a big secret. It was a little weird, given that their relationship pretty much consisted of him being a socially awkward creeper and her ignoring him, but it still made her feel good. “So,” she said, “those guys…were they INS or something?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. You talked to them, I didn’t.”

Alicia didn’t exactly have a clear image in her mind of how INS agents operated. She supposed the guys she’d talked to could’ve been INS, though—why not? Unless of course they were asking about Mikey for some completely different reason that she didn’t even want to think about, possibly involving aliases. Whatever. INS. She’d go with that for the moment. “Okay,” she said. “So, have you guys ever considered applying for citizenship? I mean, you’ve clearly been here a long time, you could probably pass the test no problem, and then you wouldn’t have these creepy guys following you around all the time.”

Mikey sighed deeply and said, “It’s not that simple. I mean, for one…we sort of….where we’re from, I don’t think they’d let us.”

Where the hell could they be from that the government wouldn’t let them apply for citizenship? Alicia guessed that there were places it was a pain in the ass to be from when you were trying to get U.S. citizenship, but she didn’t know of any place that you flat out _couldn’t_ be from. She wasn’t an expert on the subject, but it sounded kind of weird to her. Maybe the whole thing was bullshit. Maybe Mikey and his brother were serial killers or international arms dealers—they seemed kind of young, but maybe if you were in a mob family, you could get started in the crime world early. Of course, that didn’t seem terribly plausible, either. Bob and Ray had been super psyched to have their nephews stay with them, and they didn’t really seem the type to get mixed up with mob hitmen or whatever. Still she couldn’t help but ask, “If I keep quiet about this, I’m not helping cover up some murder, right?”

Mikey blinked at her, looking baffled. “You think Gerard and me killed someone? Seriously?”

He sounded so incredulous, Alicia felt a little silly for even thinking something so crazy. Clearly, she’d been watching too many crime procedurals. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I can keep your secret. For now.”

“Thanks,” said Mikey with a smile, and God, he really did have a nice smile, bright and happy and _Jesus fuck_ , maybe she should’ve slept with Kyle last night after all, if it meant she wouldn’t be thinking about Mikey fucking Way’s smile this morning. She made a note to herself to replace the batteries in her vibrator.

“Hey,” she said quickly, trying to get her mind onto other subjects. “Sarah and I are gonna walk around the town today, to check out the stores and stuff. Sarah said she saw a vintage clothes store, and I think there are a couple of used bookstores and stuff down there, too. Wanna come along?”

Mikey blinked at her for a moment without speaking, and then his smile got even bigger. “Sure,” he said.

“Great,” said Alicia, not sure what it was she’d just done.

“Lemme just….” Mikey turned, like he was looking for something, and seemingly on cue, a vaguely familiar tortoiseshell cat stalked out of the room and twined itself around Mikey’s legs, purring furiously.

It was kind of adorable, but…. “Are cats allowed in the hotel rooms?” she asked. She was pretty sure they weren’t.

Mikey made a face at her and said, “I couldn’t just leave her in the RV.” Given that the cat lived in the RV, and that Bob and Ray were still staying there to take care of their dogs, Alicia didn’t really see what the big deal was, but whatever. He picked up the cat in his arms, frowning down at it and saying, “Sorry, Bunny. You can’t come. Stay and take care of Gerard.”

The cat made a protesting noise, and Mikey shushed it by kissing its head and murmuring something at it in a low voice. It was like watching cute YouTube videos, thought Alicia, except she felt less comfortable going, “Awww!”

After a moment, Mikey put the cat back down in the room and closed the door. “Shall we?” he said, looking expectantly at Alicia.

For no explicable reason, she could feel herself blushing, and she dug out her phone to call Sarah, focusing on the wall behind Mikey as it rang.

“Hey!” Sarah answered after the third ring. “I thought you’d forgotten about me!”

“No,” Alicia said. “Listen, some stuff happened, we can talk about it later, but is it okay if Mikey comes with us?”

“Weird stalker Mikey?”

Damn, maybe she’d gotten a little sunburned the other day, because her face felt painfully warm. She turned to look at the elevators. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Um, sure,” said Sarah. “So, at some point you’ll be explaining this mysterious “stuff” that happened, right?”

“Yeah. I just kind of don’t want to do it over the phone.” She couldn’t tell Sarah about the illegal immigrant thing—that was the kind of secret that really, even telling your best friend seemed like a bad idea—but she could definitely tell her about the weird British guys in dark suits. Maybe Sarah’d have some brilliant idea what to do about them.

“All _righty_ then,” said Sarah. “But you’re okay, right?”

Actually, she was feeling better at the moment than she’d expected to, given the shit with Kyle, so she said, “I’m super! Thanks for asking!” Her Big Gay Al impression sucked, but she thought it would probably get the message across.

“Oh, boy. No more South Park for you, missy.” Somebody said something in the background, and Sarah said, “Awesome. I’ll be at your room in five minutes. And whatever, bring Mikey. The more the merrier.”

As it turned out, Sarah was right. She and Alicia and Mikey wandered around the town all afternoon, leafing through old paperbacks and trying on goofy-looking vintage hats and sunglasses and then, when it started raining, talking about Star Wars and terrible vampire movies at a quirky little mom-and-pop-run ice cream place, and it was actually _fun_.

“Okay,” Sarah said, taking a lick at her peppermint ice-cream cone. “Which is more essentially ‘crappy vampire movie?’ Intense male homoerotic subtext, or completely over-the-top lesbian _text_ -text?”

Mikey pondered that one for a moment while his melting ice cream dripped over his hand and onto the plastic table. “Well. When?”

“What do you mean?” asked Alicia. She was sort of leaning towards the intense male homoerotic subtext, herself. Dracula and Nosferatu? Full of the manlove. Then again, Lesbian Vampire Killers. Hmm.

“I don’t know,” said Mikey with a shrug. “I think the eighties are pretty much all about the dude love, but then, like, the older stuff—Dracula’s Daughter and The Hunger—you have more lesbians. It’s like a cliché.” Turning to Alicia, he said, “Dracula and Nosferatu don’t count—we’re talking about _bad_ vampire movies.”

The hell? She hadn’t even said anything. Was it possible to have a facial expression that said “Old vampire movies are homoerotic?” She must have been making a funny face at him, because Mikey looked down at the table and flushed.

“You make a good point.” Sarah gestured towards him with her cone. “Era makes a difference. Okay, then, the last ten years, let’s say.”

Mikey winced. “Uh. I haven’t seen a new movie in a while. Like, six years.”

“Are you _shitting_ me?” asked Sarah incredulously.

He shrugged uncomfortably. “Gee and Lindsey went to the new X-Men movie a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t want to, like, tag along on their date.” He looked at the floor, and his ice cream dripped down the front of his shirt. He just sighed resignedly at it.

Damn. “You are one weird dude, Mikey Way,” Alicia said, but she smiled when she said it. Hopefully he’d know she didn’t mean it in a bad way. It was actually kind of endearing, maybe even adorable.

Shit, shit, what was she even thinking?

The rest of the afternoon passed in an unsettling kind of nervousness. It was still fun, and Mikey and Sarah seemed to be having a great time, though occasionally Mikey would look at Alicia with a serious, questioning expression on his face, like he thought something was wrong.

Something _was_ wrong. As shitty as things had gotten with Kyle lately, Alicia still hadn’t really wanted to break up with him. Maybe she didn’t _love_ him or anything like that anymore, maybe she wasn’t even really into him, but it wasn’t like she was into anyone else, either. She hadn’t really been that interested in other guys since she and Kyle had started going out—she could be a bitch sometimes, she knew it, but she didn’t fuck around with one guy while she was seeing another, and mostly, she didn’t even think about it. So maybe Kyle was a shitty boyfriend, but she still felt like his girlfriend.

Or, well, she _had_. Until today, when she seemed to be feeling fluttery and fuzzy about Mikey Way, of all people.

Fuck. Maybe…maybe Sarah was right. Maybe she and Kyle had gone as far as they were gonna go. Maybe she needed some fun, low-commitment tour sex. Maybe she just needed some time to herself.

They walked back to the hotel and went their separate ways; Sarah and the other merch people were grabbing a quick dinner together before setting up their booths, and Mikey…well, who knew what he was up to. Hopefully filling in Bob and Ray about the creepy INS guys and not getting caught and sent back to whatever mysterious place he came from.

Alicia, well, clearly she wasn’t going to get the time to brood and ponder that she had hoped for, because Kyle was lounging in the desk chair of their room, looking relaxed and laid-back. Like he didn’t even remember their thing this morning. “Hey,” he said, smiling hugely at her. To her relief, he didn’t get up to try and kiss her or anything. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” said Alicia tensely. “Sarah and Mikey and I walked around town, did some shopping.”

“Mikey?” Kyle frowned slightly. “Who’s that?”

“You know. Bob and Ray’s nephew. The tall skinny one.”

He snorted with laughter at that. “Oh, God. That little weirdo. How was that?"

He didn’t say ‘that little weirdo’ in a particularly mean way, and heaven knew Alicia’d thought the same thing, oh, seventy times during the day, but she was still oddly irritated on Mikey’s behalf. “Don’t call him that,” she snapped. “It was awesome, and he’s a really nice guy. It’s fun, you know, hanging out with people who actually like hanging out with me.”

Kyle frowned again, not looking so amused anymore. “I get the impression that you’re mad at me.”

Oh _God_ , she wished she had something to throw at his head. “You picked up on that, did you?”

“For fuck’s sake, I _forgot_ this morning, okay?” said Kyle with a glare. “ _Sorry_. Want me to get on my knees and grovel?”

That would have been nice, actually—better than his sarcastic, not-at-all sorry “sorry.” But mostly, “I _want_ you to be my _boyfriend_ and not some dude I just have sex with sometimes! Don’t fucking act like this is a one-time thing—you’ve been blowing me off all summer! Remember this spring, when I pretty much _got_ you this job, and we promised we wouldn’t let working together fuck up our relationship? Remember that?”

Kyle stood up so quickly he knocked the desk chair over, and it crashed into the table with a bang. “I _went to an arcade_! It’s not like I’m _cheating_ on you! Why the fuck are you so angry? If this was such a big deal, you could have reminded me!”

“Yeah, and have you bitch about me behind my back to my coworkers because I’m such a nag?” Alicia tried to slow down her breathing before she hyperventilated, or screamed, or the top of her head exploded or something. Deep breaths, deep breaths, in and out. “I shouldn’t have to nag you into spending time with me,” she added more calmly. “Making a relationship works takes two, you know.” Wait, where had she heard that before? Jesus, that was something her _mother_ had told her when she’d broken up with her first boyfriend. “Holy fuck,” Alicia said as the realization dawned. “We’re a sitcom couple! You’re the lazy husband with the maturity level of an eleven-year-old, and I’m the shrewy wife. Oh my God. Kyle, I think we need to stop seeing each other.”

Kyle’s eyes grew huge, and he opened and closed his mouth a few times without saying anything. He looked like a fish, thought Alicia with some amusement. That was about the funniest she’d found him in a long time. Finally, he said, “You think we should break up just because I spent some time with my friends instead of, instead of _walking around_ with you?”

Alicia rolled her eyes. She should have felt worse about this, she thought. But she didn’t feel bad or scared at all. She should have done this ages ago. “Haven’t you been listening?” she said. “I don’t care if you spend time with your friends. They’re my friends, too, sort of. But it bugs me that you don’t seem to care about doing anything I want to do. You don’t even seem to care that much about this job, which I actually had to try pretty hard to get you. Maybe that’s my fault, too, maybe I ought to just give in and learn to love the pot, but we shouldn’t be in a relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship. It shouldn’t just be a chore, it should be something we like, it should be _fun_ , and I’m not having any fun. And you seem to be having fun, but not with me.”

“I….” Kyle blinked at her and shook his head, like he couldn’t even believe what she was saying. “I don’t….” He gave up on whatever he’d been trying to say and his mouth drew into a tight line before he opened it again and said, “Fine, whatever.”

Alicia laughed, feeling a little hysterical and kind of light, like she might just float out the window or something. “Right,” she said, “whatever,” and she turned and walked out the door. She probably wasn’t too late to catch up with Sarah and the merch guys and girls, she thought, and she got out her cell phone.

 _Hey_ , she texted Sarah, _u r not gonna believe what i just did…._

**

Tour break-ups, thought Lindsey, sucked. Sucked rotten donkey balls.

Like it wasn’t bad enough that a guy she’d really, really liked had turned out to be… some kind of deluded manipulator who wanted her to share his delusions, or whatever the fuck Gerard had turned out to be. Despite her efforts to keep the whole thing under wraps, she also had to deal with the shit that came from everybody knowing everybody else’s business—or at least, _thinking_ they did.

“Hey,” one of the venue managers had asked, just out of earshot of Bob, “I heard you dated one of his nephews. Is it true that they’re all in, like, a polygamist death cult?”

Emily, one of the girls who sold merch for MSI, had comforted her by saying, “I’m sorry, honey. Men always fucking cheat, don’t they?”

She was even getting it from her band. Ever since she and Gerard had had their…thing, Gerard had pretty much been absent backstage during the shows. Sometimes Lindsey looked for him in the audience, but whatever—it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. Maybe it was better that he kept his distance, given the givens. But of course Jimmy and Kitty and Steve noticed, so of course, after a week of playing like the angriest chick to ever pick up a bass, after a show where’d she’d felt ready to duplicate her fire-breathing trick, Jimmy turned to her and said, “Yo, Lyn, where’s your groupie?”

Lindsey gritted her teeth. Pretty much the last thing in the world she wanted to do was talk or even think about Gerard right now. She’d actually been making a concerted effort for the last week to think about anything else. “He’s NOT my fucking groupie!” she snapped, a little louder than she’d meant to.

Jimmy raised his eyebrows at that. “Whatever,” he said. “You were the fucking man tonight! Badass, sister, bad-fucking-ass.”

“I felt pretty good,” Lindsey admitted. Sometimes, when you were that angry and confused and _crushed_ , rocking the hell out was a powerful release.

“Mm-hmm,” said Steve skeptically. “Yeah, you and me are gonna have a talk, real soon. Hey, Bob!” he called over Lindsey’s head, to where Bob was gathering up a few pieces of Dan’s drum kit in preparation for the Used’s set. “Did your nephew break Lindsey’s heart? Is there gonna have to be a throwdown?”

Bob straightened up and gave Steve a flat look. “Do you really want to get into this now?” He didn’t even look at Lindsey, and for some reason, she was relieved. If he was pissed at her, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude, I was only kidding!” He looked inquiringly at Lindsey before making a face and saying, “Jimmy and Kitty and I can totally take all those Used motherfuckers!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Kitty dubiously, sizing Bob up.

Ray had come up behind Bob, carrying an amp and staring at them all curiously, and Matt and the guys from the Used were close behind Ray. “Shut the fuck up,” Lindsey whispered loudly to Steve. If she was gonna have to talk about this, she wasn’t fucking doing it in front of a crowd of people.

Of course, her friends being the immense assholes that they were, Jimmy totally ignored her and shouted, “Hey, motherfuckers, you ready for some West Side Story shit?” over her head at the Used, topping it off with what he obviously thought were some sweet dance moves.

“Fuck, yeah!” Jepha shouted back, raising his fists like they were gonna have a boxing match right there on the stage. Dropping them suddenly, he asked, “Wait, who gets to be Maria?”

“ _I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and GAY!_ ” Bert sang. “Fuckers, I am _totally_ Maria.”

“Hey,” said Quinn, turning to Lindsey, “why are we throwing down again? Is this about you and Gerard breaking up?”

Lindsey wanted to crawl into a hole and die, or maybe just go somewhere where she’d never have to talk to another human being ever again. “Fuck off,” she said to Quinn. “It’s about all you assholes screwing up Steve and Bert’s beautiful love.”

While Steve and Bert stared contemplatively at each other and Bob, Ray, and Matt pushed past them to set up for the Used’s show, Lindsey slipped backstage to grab a beer from the greenroom and make her escape.

She hadn’t felt so emo in years, she thought as she sat in her bunk, staring at the ceiling and sipping her beer. But then, all her previous breakups had been for pretty normal reasons—guy was too smothering, long-distance relationship wasn’t gonna work, girl decided she was “just experimenting,” guy was dumping her for that girl in 2nd period calc who would go on to be prom queen. Okay, that one had hurt. But she’d never broken up with a guy because he’d claimed to be an alien and then made her hallucinate shit. Not until Gerard. She didn’t know if it hurt more because she’d misjudged him so badly, or because she still didn’t understand what had happened, or because…well, whatever. It might have been because she was still in those first flushes of infatuation, she thought. That was a bad time for things to go down the crapper.

The door of the bus closed loudly, and she closed her eyes. Maybe if she pretended to be asleep, she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

“Lindsey?” It was Kitty. “You okay?”

She kept her eyes closed, and tried to breathe slower.

“Come on, we know you’re awake.” Great, Steve was here, too. “That fake-ass sleeping isn’t fooling anyone.”

Lindsey sat up with a groan. “Fucking _what_?” she said. “It’s not enough that you guys have to publicly discuss my breakups, but I have to _be_ there while you do it?”

“Sorry about that,” said Steve, making a face and actually sounding pretty apologetic. “I didn’t know you guys had broken up. I thought maybe you were just fighting or something—I was just trying to get a laugh out of you.”

“Well, _you_ clearly haven’t been listening to the tour gossip.”

“I never do,” said Kitty. “If I wanted to hear about how I’m secretly pregnant with Jimmy’s lovechild, I’d get on the internet. So, what happened with you and Gerard?”

Lindsey contemplated coming right out and saying it, but then again, she really _had_ seen the shoes bouncing around in midair, the leaves forming an outline of a dancing person, and she still hadn’t figured out how Gerard could have slipped her a hallucinogen in the time between the end of the set and their scene in the woods. Maybe she was going completely insane, and if so, she wasn’t super keen on Kitty and Steve knowing. “It’s hard to explain,” she said finally.

Steve made a rude noise. “Wrong answer!” he said. “Come on!”

“You don’t _have_ to tell us anything, but we promise, we won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want us to,” said Kitty with a sincere look on her face. “We’re your friends. We just want to help.”

Lindsey still wasn’t wild about talking about what had happened, but the idea of getting some comfort from her friends was pretty tempting. “Okay,” she said haltingly. “It’s like…what do you do if someone tells you so totally unbelievable, it has to be a lie, but then they keep trying to convince you that it’s true, and it makes you wonder if all the other stuff they told you was a lie, too?” Come to think of it, a lot of what Gerard had told her was pretty strange—the weird culty group in the sticks, the ‘getting orphaned three times’ thing. Maybe it had all been a ploy for sympathy, or the build-up to this big deception. Or delusion.

“Wait, what? What did he tell you?” asked Steve, looking confused.

She hesitated again. If she came right out and said, "He told me he’s an alien,” they’d think it was just a joke unless she told them about the floating shoes thing and…well, she was still trying to wrap her head around just what that meant. She should have told them. She should have gotten security to figure out just what Gerard had done. But she thought of his stricken face, and the way everything had seemed totally normal until the dancing shoes, and she thought that maybe hallucinogenic drugs weren’t the problem. “Just trust me,” she said. “It couldn’t be true.”

“You sure he wasn’t just joking?” Kitty asked. At Lindsey’s nod, she said, “Well, if you’re not gonna tell us what he actually said…is it the kind of lie that’s a really big deal? Like, I dunno, he keeps _telling_ you he’s not married, but you found his wedding pictures or something?”

Just how big a deal was someone thinking they were an alien? “I don’t even know if it was a lie,” she said. “I think maybe he thinks it’s true…which makes me think maybe he’s totally, completely delusional. But then…then he showed me, so maybe _I’m_ delusional, too.”

“He _showed_ you?” Steve frowned. “We’re not talking about the size of this guy’s dick, are we? Because I gotta tell you, that’s something I pretty much don’t ever, ever want to know.”

That startled a laugh out of Lindsey. “No,” she said. “It’s not about his dick.”

“Whew,” Steve said in exaggerated relief, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead. More seriously, he added, “But the problem’s that he’s nuts, right? Not that he did something really bad? I mean, you’re okay and everything?”

For certain values of okay, values that meant, _I have no fucking idea, and either I broke up with an alien or a completely unhinged wacko, and I’m not real fond of either option._ “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good,” said Kitty. “’Cause I have to say, I didn’t feel good about our chances against the Used and company. I mean, I could totally take out Bert and Quinn with my wiles, and Jimmy and the crew could probably get Dan and Jepha, but I’m pretty sure Ray’s hair alone could beat Steve in a fight.”

Steve shook his head sadly. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

“I just call ’em like I see ‘em,” said Kitty matter-of-factly. She peered thoughtfully at Lindsey and said “You look like a girl who could use a good time, and the night is still young. Margaritas and the Evil Dead trilogy?”

“Jesus Christ, it’s like we’re the same person! That’s exactly what I was thinking!” Steve said before turning to raise his eyebrows inquisitively at Lindsey.

She dredged up a watery smile. It was really good to have friends, even if they were assholes sometimes. “Throw in Bubba Ho-Tep, and we’ve got a deal,” she said. The bright smiles she got from Steve and Kitty made her own more genuine.

She woke in the morning feeling hung-over but better—less shittily depressed, more willing to think about what had actually happened between her and Gerard. It wasn’t terribly easy, maneuvering out from between Steve and Kitty on the couch, but she managed. Throwing on a shirt that struck her as at least reasonably clean, she stepped off the bus and closed the door quietly behind her. She needed a little time alone, to walk and think. It was early, the grass on the edges of the parking lot still glistening with dew and mist wafting over the blacktop, and no one was around. It felt like she had the whole world to herself.

Question 1, she asked herself: Did she really think Gerard would have or could have drugged her?

Answer: No. Not really. All character judgments aside, he hadn’t had the opportunity. Theoretically, he could have spiked the water backstage while MSI was playing, but he couldn’t have known which bottle Lindsey would grab, and nobody else had been seeing floating shoes. Plus, Gerard hadn’t been pressing her for sex—he’d seemed kind of intimidated when she stuck her hand down his pants, actually—and who drugged someone with the sole purpose of convincing her that he was an alien?

Question 2: Were there any other, more plausible explanations for the whole “dancing shoes” incident?

Answer: Not that she could think of. It wasn’t like she was hitting the LSD or the shrooms. As far as she knew, she wasn’t given to hallucinations, and even if she were, how the hell would Gerard know? They’d been out in the fucking woods, so it wasn’t like he could have set it up with wires or fans or CGI or whatever. And theoretically, she supposed, it was possible that he could have some kind of psychic power and still be perfectly human, but was that really more plausible than his being an alien?

Which brought her to question 3: Given the givens, did she really think he could have been telling her the truth?

It seemed like such _bullshit_. Lindsey liked to think she was pretty open-minded about the possibility of life beyond Earth, but if there were aliens, what would they be doing wandering around watching concerts and dating human girls? The only thing she could think of was a slow invasion by infiltration, but seriously? _Gerard_ , invading the planet? The whole idea just seemed too unbelievable for words.

She just couldn’t think of a better explanation.

She hadn’t reached any satisfactory conclusions, but her solitude was starting to dissipate. Some locals, walking their dogs, paused to stare at the buses, giving Lindsey a curious look; the Used, apparently not content with whatever West Side Story-style gang fighting they’d managed to get out of Jimmy and Kitty and Steve after Lindsey had left, were having a water balloon fight with Brand New; a group of people were hanging out outside of Brand New’s bus, watching Noah, their keyboard tech, doing tricks on a skateboard.

A couple of people disentangled themselves from the knot of techs and merch guys and girls to head over to where Lindsey was standing, and she felt herself stiffen as soon as she recognized Mikey. The other person was Alicia, one of Brand New’s techs, who was following Mikey with a kind of determined supportiveness that reminded Lindsey of a second in a duel or something. Maybe she wasn’t that far off the mark, she thought, getting a good look at Mikey’s grim expression.

She pasted on a tight, polite smile as they drew near. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” said Alicia, while Mikey nodded.

“So, um,” he said. “You know what my brother told you the other day?”

It wasn’t exactly easy to forget. Lindsey nodded.

“Okay. Well, don’t tell anyone else, or bad stuff will happen.” His voice was low and serious, and he stared intensely at her while he was talking.

Lindsey had to stop and stare at him for a minute. Was he actually threatening her, or what? Fuck, if he was an alien, too—she caught herself mid-thought, because obviously that was bullshit. Probably. But it wasn’t like a guy had to be an alien to be fucking creepy.

Alicia gave Mikey an unimpressed look and reached up to flick at his ear, and he grimaced. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean—I wasn’t trying to threaten you or anything. I meant bad stuff will happen to _us_ if you tell.” He looked down at his feet for a moment before glancing up at Lindsey again, as serious as ever but looking a little more vulnerable. Maybe even a little scared. “Please. Don’t tell, okay?”

Nothing about it seemed like a joke, or like Mikey just trying to cover for his brother’s weirdness. Lindsey felt a shiver run across her back and shoulders and tried to cover it by shrugging. “I’m not gonna tell,” she said, and it was true—hell, if she hadn’t told Kitty and Steve, she wasn’t going to tell anyone. Who did you tell, anyway, when your sort of-ex-tour fling told you he was an alien and you actually kind of believed him?

Mikey stared at her for a long moment as if he was trying to read her mind—and fuck, maybe he was—before he nodded, looking satisfied. “Cool,” he said.

Alicia smiled with relief, and Lindsey wondered if she knew about the alien thing, too. She and Mikey seemed to be getting pretty close. Lindsey remembered Gerard telling her that Mikey had a huge crush on Alicia, then hurriedly adding, “But don’t tell anyone. She has a boyfriend, and he’s trying not to be creepy. Mikey, not the boyfriend. I don’t even know the boyfriend, so I don’t know whether he’s creepy or not.”

God, Gerard was such a weirdo. And now, apparently, he was a weirdo of extraterrestrial proportions. But it still hurt her like a punch in the gut to think that whatever they had together was over.

Over? Fuck, maybe it had never existed. Maybe she was just part of his cover, maybe dating was something he did to hide his identity and blend in, maybe he had never really cared about her at all, and _that_ idea sucked even more than the idea that they were broken up.

Wait, did she really think he was an alien?

Fuck it, she decided. Enough of this wussy, chickenshit navel-gazing. She had to talk to Gerard. And maybe it would end with them breaking up for good, and maybe it wouldn’t, and maybe it would end with her discovering something fantastic about life on other planets—like that it existed—and maybe it wouldn’t, but either way, she was a fucking adult and she could deal with her own problems.

She was pretty sure, she could, anyway. The closer she got to the RV, the slower and more reluctant her steps got and the stronger her urge got just to walk on by and deal with all of it later. But a couple of years of playing through injuries and hangovers and particularly crappy periods had made her pretty good at doing things she didn’t want to do, and so she made herself walk to the front door.

She took a deep breath, and knocked.

She wasn’t sure whether to be happy or unhappy that Gerard was the one to open the door—happy, because it meant she wouldn’t have to deal with Ray or Bob or Frank, unhappy because it meant there was no buffer between her and Gerard’s face, which abruptly went from downcast and unhappy to nervous and surprised as soon as he realized who was at the door.

She actually _had_ had a bunch of ideas of what to say to him to start this conversation, but suddenly she couldn’t think of a single one of them, and the confidence she’d carefully built up abandoned her, leaving her feeling small and unsure. The only words that came to mind were, “Aliens, huh?” She wanted to smack herself immediately after the words escaped. It wasn’t like she really even believed in the whole story—it was totally ridiculous, right?—and even if she did, surely she could’ve come up with something wittier to say than _that_. If this whole thing was some kind of wacky practical joke, she was sure giving Gerard plenty of fuel.

But Gerard didn’t even crack a smile. He just said, “Yeah,” nodding slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Oh,” Lindsey said. “Can you maybe show me one more time?”

Gerard didn’t ask what she wanted him to show her, he just looked around nervously and said, “Why don’t you come in, okay?”

It seemed like maybe a dumb idea to go into his RV, seeing as how if he was lying, he was either insane or a total scumbag, and if he was telling the truth, he was a goddamned alien. Still, she didn’t hesitate. There were plenty of people around, and she felt pretty good about her chances if it came to a fistfight between her and Gerard.

She stepped right in and looked around. It didn’t look like the recreational vehicle of a sociopath or anything—it looked the same as it had when she’d come to hang out and watch Saved by the Bell, with an open bag of Ruffles on the table and an unmade sofa-bed and clothes piled on the floor. They seemed to be alone, which was made her feel better than it probably should have. She sat on the bed and looked at Gerard while he closed the door and turned back to her.

“Um,” he said, his eyes moving back and forth between her and his feet. “So, this works better when I use my harmonica.” He dug it out of his pocket and blew a high, clear note. The pile of dirty clothes floated lightly up into the air and hovered, bouncing up and down a little when Gerard switched pitches on the harmonica. He played a descending scale, and the pile sank back to the floor, dirty socks rolling down from the top of it. Putting the harmonica back in his pocket, he looked at her with solemn, anxious eyes.

Right. Aliens, she thought, just a little hysterical. Her maybe-sort-of boyfriend person was an actual, honest-to-God extraterrestrial. She was out of disbelief at this point, and she couldn’t rationalize any of it away anymore. She just didn’t have it in her. “So,” she said tentatively, “you’re not, like…invading the earth to take us over, right?” Not that she’d know what to do if he were, but she thought it was still worth asking.

Gerard’s eyes widened, and he shook his head vehemently. “Oh, no, no way. We just needed someplace else to live, that’s all. Definitely not into world domination or anything.”

She looked him up and down, from his messy black hair to his untied shoes, and she studied the familiar curves of his face. Was any of it, was any part of the guy she thought she’d gotten to know and like, actually real? “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded again, as energetically as he’d shook his head before. “’Course. Anything.”

“Do you really look like that?” At his confused look, she gestured towards him. “You know. Are you really…humanoid, or is that just, like, a hologram, and underneath you look like the little green men or something?”

Gerard drew his eyebrows together, looking more confused than ever. “Um. No, I actually look like this. I mean, we’re genetically different, and I think our brains are, like, set up differently or something, but other than that, we’re pretty human.” He winced. “I don’t really like to say it like that, ‘cause, fuck, it’s kind of weird to admit you’re not human, but…that’s pretty much it.”

“So, more Clark Kent than My Favorite Martian, then?” she asked after a long pause, feeling stupid but not knowing what else to say.

“Oh, man, don’t even say that!” he said, sounding disgruntled. Before she could ask if she’d offended him, or apologize, he said, “I mean, okay, saving lives is obviously a noble thing to do—with great power comes great responsibility, and so on, and so forth. But seriously, if you’re gonna fly around saving people, and you don’t want anyone to find out who you are, _wear a fucking mask_. And don’t even get me started on how he fucking lies to everyone all the time in  Smallville. He could totally have told Lana the truth.” He sat down on the bed, leaving a few feet between them but a lot closer than he had been, and gave her a tentative smile.

Lindsey smiled back. She’d only ever seen a few episodes of Smallville, but she’d definitely watched some Superman movies in her day, so super-powered stupidity wasn’t exactly a novel concept for her. “Hey, he doesn’t need a mask,” she said. “I mean, nobody recognizes him, right? Glasses, man, they make you completely unrecognizable.”

“No, you’re right,” he said, “stupidity’s just written into the whole Superman mythos, because _seriously_.” He rolled his eyes, “My brother used to have glasses, and then he got his eyes fixed, and guess what? I still recognized him. And Lois is supposed to be an _investigative reporter_ , for Chrissakes. Oh, man, the whole thing with her and the Green Arrow in Smallville is just ridiculous.”

“Okay,” she said, laughing at his downright indignation.

He grinned at her. “No joke,” he said. “Frickin’ Superman gives aliens _and_ humans a bad name. And what the fuck is the deal with that outfit, anyway?”

“What,” she said, “You don’t fly around in a blue spandex suit?” It suddenly occurred to her that it wasn’t as ridiculous a question as it seemed, and she asked, “Wait, can you fly?”

Gerard shrugged. “Eh, not really,” he said. “I can jump real high, and kind of hover, but it’s not really flying.”

Oh. Of course he could. Suddenly, Lindsey was feeling a lot more sober. This was a strange, strange thing to be confronted with. A thousand questions bubbled up in her mind, but the one that came out was, “So, you’ve been here for a while, then. On Earth, I mean.”

“Well, yeah.” He scratched uncomfortably at his hair, looking sidelong at Lindsey. “I’ve been here since I was five. Like, you remember when I told you my parents died in a boat accident?”

“Yeah,” she said, already knowing where this was going.

“Well, it was kind of more like a spaceship accident. Mikey and me got picked up by the Coast Guard, and….” He turned his head to look at her straight on, his expression earnest. “I hope you don’t think…I didn’t tell you where I really come from, but the rest of what I told you…I didn’t lie. We really did meet Frank at a group home, and we really did get adopted by my grandma. Just, in the middle, we got chased by a bunch of alien-chasing FBI agents.”

She had to laugh at that. “Oh, yeah, well, I can see how you might forget to mention that part.” She didn’t have the heart to get mad at him about it, though; it wasn’t like she would have believed him if he’d stuck that part in, anyway. Scooting a little closer, she asked, “So, where _do_ you come from?”

He chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment before saying, “You can’t see it from here, but, um, you can see the galaxy, with a telescope. We called the galaxy Artarthra, but it doesn’t have a name here, just, you know, like a bunch of numbers and letters. The planet’s Amalthea. It’s, like, I dunno, 50 million light years away or something.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, feeling totally out of her element. “How can you be twenty years old and be from that far away? Shouldn’t you be, like, fifty million years old?”

Gerard shrugged. “We can travel faster than light, I guess.”

This was genuinely crazy shit, here. Gerard, _Gerard_ , who watched all of Lindsey’s concerts and drew comic books and watched Smallville, was from _fifty million light years_ away. He could travel _faster than light_. “How?” she found herself asking, and she couldn’t even blame herself for sounding awed. This was like, a major event in human history.

He shrugged again. “I don’t know, some science thing. I didn’t really pay attention in physics in school.”

And then she was laughing again. “Oh my _God_ , Gerard,” she said. “You know this is totally crazy, right?”

He smiled tentatively. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I was really weirded out when I first found out.”

“You didn’t know?” she asked. It was amazing how fast she could move from awed to amused to downright confused, she thought, but the situation was, admittedly, pretty unusual. It was hard to imagine not knowing you were an alien, Lindsey thought, but she’d never given the matter that much thought before.

“Nope,” said Gerard, shaking his head unnecessarily. “I mean, Mikey and I always knew we were pretty different, but not, like, _alien_ different. And we couldn’t remember the crash, except in nightmares, and it wasn’t like our mom knew where we were from, either, so it was easy to just, you know, forget. We didn’t figure it out until we met Bob and Ray.”

“Wow.” Lindsey tried to imagine what it would feel like to suddenly discover at age fourteen that she was an alien. She almost thought it would’ve been a relief—she’d always felt so weird and out of place at that age that it would’ve been kind of nice to learn there was a reason for it. She wondered if that’s what Gerard and Mikey had felt like, or if they’d been scared, or confused.

“Well, like I said, it was pretty weird, and we were a little scared, but it was also sort of like, wow, we actually had family out there. And also, the super powers thing suddenly made sense. So that was cool.” Gerard paused, seeming to notice that she hadn’t actually wondered anything out loud. “Sorry,” he said, looking worried and genuinely penitent. “Man, I’m not even the mind reader in the family, seriously. Swear to God, I’m not trying to invade your privacy or anything. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that I spend more time thinking about what you’re thinking than with most people. Does that make any sense?”

“Um. I guess?” Lindsey said, waving one hand. She was a little weirded out, but also kind of flattered—he spent more time thinking about what she was thinking? Seriously? Plus, it actually made it easier to know that even if she couldn’t put stuff into words as well as she would’ve liked, Gerard could still figure out what she meant. “So, are you all psychic or something?”

“Mm, kind of,” said Gerard. “I mean, okay, most of us can _hear_ thoughts if someone sends them to us, or, like, when a normal person—like, a human, not one of us—is thinking, I don’t usually get _words_ , but I get the jist of stuff. I can’t send thoughts real well, though. Mikey, now, Mikey’s like a super-psychic. He’s really good at the whole mind-reading thing.”

“Is that why he doesn’t talk much?”

He nodded. “It drives Frank nuts, because sometimes he just forgets to talk out loud, and then I’ll start answering him out loud, and Frank has no idea what we’re talking about.”

“I can see that,” Lindsey said. It was so weird, she thought, how she was totally going along with this. Now that Gerard was coming out and talking about it, though, it made a lot of sense, and Gerard didn’t have any of the weird, secretive discomfort that had bugged her so much before, so she was more or less willing to accept what he said at face value. “So, wait, Frank’s human, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Gerard, nodding again. “Totally human. I think it sucks for him sometimes, living with us. Like, we love him, and he’s our best friend, but I think it’s weird for him. ‘Cause, like, not many of us know that much about Earth culture, you know, and just….” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m really glad we got to come here, and now he’s going out with Jamia, and I think it’s really good for him, you know? To come back and spend time with, I don’t know, normal Earth people.”

“Oh, yeah? Hasn’t it been good for you, too?” she asked, scooting even closer and pouting a little.

She wasn’t even thinking about what she was saying, really, just giving him a little shit, but Gerard went a dark, almost painful-looking red. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “It’s been…I mean, you…I’m really glad we met.”

There wasn’t a trace of dishonesty or flattery or anything in his face as he looked at her, and she could feel herself blushing, too. She suddenly felt ten times more awkward than she had a moment before, and for what felt like a long time, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally, she said, “Hey, um. I’m sorry I was kind of a bitch before.” She didn’t elaborate on what she meant by ‘before,’ but hey, Gerard was the psychic. He’d figure it out.

Gerard looked up then, with his eyes wide and his mouth open, like that was the last thing he ever expected her to say. “No way,” he said. “You weren’t. I mean, I’d just told you….”

“Yeah,” said Lindsey, but the very fact that he was even saying that, like it hadn’t even occurred to him to think she was being bitchy, made her feel even worse. “No, it was definitely _justifiable_ bitchiness, but…I’m pretty sure I knew you wouldn’t actually, like. Drug me or whatever. Just, this alien shit is totally insane, you know? It’s hard to know what to think when someone tells you something like that.”

Gerard nodded with a thoughtful expression on his face. “No, totally,” he said, “That makes sense. I don’t even know _what_ I’d think if I were you.” His mouth twisted down on one side, and he added, “I feel like I should have figured out a better way to tell you. I didn’t really mean to freak you out.”

“Don’t worry about it.” It was weird--this was serious stuff they were talking about, but somehow Lindsey couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “It took a lot of guts to tell me something like that in the first place, so…thanks. I’m glad you….” Would it be too presumptuous to say _trusted me?_ “Told me,” she said, wimping out.

Gerard’s eyes dropped to his shoes, and he twitched one shoulder in a sort-of shrug, looking uncomfortable all of a sudden. “I didn’t want to be dishonest or anything,” he mumbled. “I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve….” He was looking at the floor again.

“Should’ve what?” said Lindsey with a frown. How could he possibly be regretting telling her _now_ , after she’d told him it was okay and she was glad that he’d trusted her enough to tell her such a big secret?

Gerard looked straight at her, his face solemn. “It’s not like I think you’d tell anyone, ‘cause I don’t. But….” His eyes darted back and forth, like he thought someone was hiding in the corners of Bob and Ray’s RV. “Okay, so, there are these guys from the FBI here. I mean, right here, going to the concerts and stuff. And they’re from this division of the FBI that hunts aliens, the one I mentioned earlier, and they almost caught us six years ago, and I’m really afraid that if they think you know about us they’re gonna…I don’t know, arrest you or something.”

Jesus. Lindsey couldn’t find it within herself to do anything but stare for a moment before mustering up the presence of mind to say, “Shit.”

Gerard twisted his mouth on one side, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah,” he said, exhaling loudly. “These guys are real assholes. I mean, six years ago, they threatened Bob and Ray, and they held a gun on Frank and said if Mikey and I didn’t go with them, they’d kill him. I don’t…I don’t know what we’re gonna do.”

Through the shock, Lindsey felt a twinge of fear work its way up her spine. Could the government even _do_ that, threaten to kill a little kid just to get their hands on a couple of aliens? A couple of aliens who were just kids themselves, she reminded herself. Surely that had to be illegal—and there was security, they wouldn’t let just anyone get near enough to _kill_ someone, to get at her or Jimmy or Kitty or Steve or Bob or Ray or…or Gerard. “You think…would they hurt you?”

Gerard looked at his shoes and said, “I don’t know. They’re not supposed to kill us, so they can study us and stuff, but….” He trailed off, and he didn’t have to say any more; Lindsey wasn’t a moron, she could figure out that whatever ‘studying’ aliens entailed, it probably wasn’t very pleasant for the aliens. “And they don’t seem to have a problem with shooting other people,” he added. “I don’t know why the government would let them get away with that, but I guess this whole alien-catching thing is a pretty high priority.”

“Jesus.” Now she understood what Mikey’d been saying earlier about bad things happening—but it sounded like he’d been wrong. The bad stuff wasn’t just aimed at him and Gerard, it was headed for all of them. “So, what,” she said, “are you guys going to have to go home? I mean, that’s why you couldn’t talk about where your town was, right—it’s like a secret?” That brought Gerard and Lindsey back to their original problem: it was hard to maintain a relationship when one of you was hiding in the middle of nowhere from the government. But now that Lindsey understood what the deal really was, that seemed like small potatoes.

“I don’t know,” said Gerard. He still wasn’t meeting her eyes. “I mean, Ray’s worried that if we go now, we’ll lead the FBI guys to the Republic—that’s our town—and then _all_ of us’ll get caught, not just Mikey and me. But then on the other hand, if they catch us, maybe they’ll get that information out of us anyway. Interrogation and shit like that.” He paused, giving her a bashful, sideways look. “I really don’t _want_ to go home right now. I mean, there’re all these new movies and comics and bands and stuff I haven’t seen in six years, and…you know. I like hanging out with you.”

His fingers were drumming nervously on the bed, and he kept biting his lip and giving her those glances out of the corner of his eye, and really, nobody could blame her for thinking he was adorable, alien or not. She put a hand on his shoulder, waiting for him to look her in the eye. “Hey,” she said. “Likewise.” Leaning in closer, she kissed him.

It wasn’t exactly the world’s most romantic kiss. They were sitting on Bob and Ray’s gross sofa-bed, and Gerard didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, and when she reached up to run her fingers through his hair, she realized that he probably hadn’t showered in a while, because wow was his hair greasy. But somehow none of that stopped her from feeling simultaneously thrilled and relieved, like she’d reclaimed something she’d never thought she’d get back but didn’t want to do without.

“Wow,” he said when she finally pulled away. He looked kind of dazed, and she laughed.

“Wanna go grab some breakfast?” she asked. “It’s almost nine. My band was pretty pissed about the whole break-up thing, but they’ll be cool—I promise I won’t let them beat you up or anything.” A sobering thought occurred to her, though, and she asked, “Wait, can you go out? I mean, with the FBI guys around?”

Gerard shrugged. “Sure. I’m probably safer in a crowd than I am here. I bet they can’t really do anything in front of a bunch of people.”

It was a crappy-looking day out, muggy and gray with dark clouds on the horizon. Despite the early hour, it was already uncomfortably hot, and Lindsey had the sneaking suspicion that she was going to be a gross ball of sweat before she even stepped onto the stage tonight. Somehow, none of it bothered her. As she and Gerard stepped out of the RV, she felt better than she had all week.

Gerard, however, didn’t seem as upbeat. They hadn’t gotten far before he stopped, turning his head from side to side with a frown on his face. He kind of looked like a dog who’d gotten a whiff of an unfamiliar scent.

“What is it?” asked Lindsey.

“I don’t know,” Gerard said with an anxious little shrug. “I just…sometimes, we have bad feelings. Like something’s gonna happen. And, uh, I kind of have a bad feeling.”

Well, shit. Lindsey barely had time to process that before she registered the sound of screeching tires, way, way too close. She turned her head to see a black car with shaded windows hurtling across the parking lot in their direction. People were staring at it, but the space between the other buses and the RV was big enough that nobody was in danger of being run over, despite the car’s speed.

Nobody except _them_. Whatever the maniac behind the wheel wanted, running seemed like a good idea. There was a McDonald’s a hundred yards or so behind them; they could beat the car there if they were fast. “Hey,” she said, pulling Gerard’s arm and pointing to the McDonald’s. “Let’s go!”

They ran, but the car actually _sped up_ behind them. God, this wasn’t just some drunk driver, this was someone _trying_ to hurt one of them. Lindsey wondered briefly which of them this asshole was after, but her curiosity was overwhelmed by disbelief and fear and worry when Gerard abruptly stopped and turned to look at the car. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his harmonica.

He blew a long, sharp note, followed by a loud trill, and to Lindsey’s amazement, the car slowed, its brakes screeching horribly. Gerard glared at it and played Darth Vader’s march from Star Wars, and the car rolled to a stop before its wheels started to spin in the opposite direction, carrying the car slowly backwards until something under the engine made a noise like a shotgun going off. The car stopped completely, then, black smoke billowing from the hood.

Jesus. Lindsey hadn’t realized Gerard’s harmonica powers were strong enough to stop a car in its tracks. They didn’t really have time to stop and marvel at it, though, because the car door was opening and a man in a dark suit was stepping out while Gerard stood stock-still and stared at him. “Come _on_ , you dumbass!” she said, pulling at his arm again.

Her voice seemed to penetrate whatever weird haze Gerard was in, and he grabbed her hand and started running. They ran past the McDonald’s and part of the way around the block before ducking between two buildings to run to the MSI bus under the cover of the crowd. Lindsey felt like her heart would beat out of her chest as she slammed the bus door shut behind her.

Jimmy, Kitty, and Steve were all sitting on the couch, staring at them. “Howdy,” said Jimmy, raising an inquisitive eyebrow in Lindsey’s direction.

She couldn’t blame them for being confused. She probably looked like she’d just run a marathon—she sure _felt_ like she had—and Gerard, the guy she’d just broken up with, as far as her band knew, was standing next to her with his hands on his knees, panting and gasping.

“Hey,” said Lindsey. That was about all she had breath for.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Oh, no, don’t tell us what’s going on. We prefer to guess. Me first—are you on the run from the cops?”

“Scary fucking cops,” Lindsey managed. “They just about ran us over with their car, whoever they were.” If those were the FBI agents Gerard and his family were on the run from, she couldn’t blame them at all for being scared.

“Oh,” Gerard breathed hoarsely. “Oh, fuck.”

“What the hell, bro?” asked Steve, turning his attention to Gerard. “One minute you’re breaking Lindsey’s heart, telling her some kind of impossible shit, the next minute you and her are getting chased by killer cops?”

Gerard looked up. “They’re not cops. I mean, I think they’re the FBI, but….” He gave Lindsey’s band a dubious look and leaned in close to her, whispering. “There’s something really weird about those guys.”

Weirder than being alien-hunting FBI agents?

“Hey,” said Kitty sharply. “No secrets, kids. Share with the class.”

Gerard looked dubiously at Lindsey. “Um…I can’t really…I need to go find Ray and Bob and tell them. About the FBI guys. You can stay and explain stuff. If you want, I mean.”

 _Fuck that_ , she thought, and Gerard must have heard it, because his eyes got big. Good. She wasn’t letting him wander off in search of Ray and Bob by himself—maybe she didn’t have any badass harmonica telekinesis, but she could hold her own, and at the very least she could be a witness if the creepy hit-and-runners took Gerard. Plus, she was seriously not in the mood to come up with a good lie for her band about what had gone down with the FBI and the alien shit. As a matter of fact, she wanted some explanations herself—hadn’t Gerard said that they weren’t interested in killing him and Mikey?

“Sorry, guys,” she said. “I’ll explain later.” She’d recovered enough, now. She grabbed Gerard’s hand. “Let’s go find Ray and Bob.”

“You’re sure?” Gerard asked.

Eh. Not really, but it wasn’t like she’d never done anything risky or stupid before, and if there was a better cause to risk your ass than protecting your alien boyfriend from being kidnapped by evil FBI agents, well, Lindsey didn’t want to hear about it. “Fuck yeah,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

**

“Good going, shit-for-brains,” said Brian, cuffing Jarvis upside the head. “You’re aware we want the heirs _alive_ , right?”

“I wasn’t going to hit him,” Jarvis grumbled. “If you hadn’t been distracting me….”

“And you’re supposed to be the technologically proficient one,” Brian said irritably. “Move your ass. I’m driving.”

**

All things considered, Ray, thought, things were going pretty well.

Sure, since his fight with Lindsey, Gerard had been hiding in the RV or a hotel room, refusing to do anything but mope and draw and write what were undoubtedly angsty song lyrics—which was probably just as well, since the tour gossip had concluded that the breakup was all his fault, and pretty much no one outside of the Used and their crew was willing to hang out with him, anyway.

Sure, the FBI were still out there, somewhere, on the boys’ trail. Well, “somewhere” didn’t really cover it. Mikey’d started having bad dreams about them, and if Alicia was right, they had actually found the tour, and they were asking crew and fans about Gerard and Mikey. Which was, okay, really fucking scary.

But on the plus side, Alicia’d given them a pretty good description of the guys, and it was easy enough for them to tell security that the men in dark suits were stalkers and needed to be kept away. They had some really good guys doing security on this tour, so Ray felt pretty good about their ability to avoid the FBI guys until Brian Schechter came.

What’s more, Frank and Mikey had made up, so at least Ray and Bob didn’t have to deal with a pair of feuding teenage boys on top of everything else. And Lindsey had shown no signs of going around telling everyone what Gerard had said, despite Mikey’s having taken a week to ask her to keep quiet. And speaking of Mikey, it seemed that he’d finally convinced Alicia that he wasn’t a complete creep, so he wasn’t moping around all the time anymore. (Honestly, one depressed Way at a time was enough to deal with.) He’d hung out with her that morning and had come back cheerful and downright chatty--for Mikey, anyway. Plus, Ray was having a really good time jamming with Frank and Mikey and occasionally Alicia; he really thought that, with a little work, they could be putting out some genuinely decent songs. Well, if they got to stay the whole summer. And right now, he and Bob and Mikey were enjoying some top-quality eats at Waffle House.

So really, on the whole, things weren’t so bad.

“What are you grinning about?” Bob asked, his gruff tone belied by his own smile.

“Oh, nothing,” said Ray. “I was just thinking that, you know, all things considered, this summer’s going pretty well.”

As if sent by the gods of comedic timing, the bell hanging over the Waffle House’s door rang loudly and Mikey’s head shot up. Generally speaking, a serious and alert Mikey was a sign that some heavy shit was going down, so Ray turned to see Gerard and Lindsey pushing their way in, breathing heavily. Lindsey looked confused and on edge; Gerard just looked freaked.

“You had to go and jinx us, didn’t you?” Bob shook his head and stood up, striding firmly over to Gerard and Lindsey. “You guys okay?” he asked.

Gerard nodded quickly. Lindsey made a face and said, “Speak for yourself, dude. We’ve been running around all morning—apparently the Men in Black are looking to add vehicular manslaughter to their repertoire.”

What? Ray squirmed out of the booth, followed by Mikey. “They tried to _kill_ you?” he asked, sounding shrill to his own ears. “What the fuck?”

“My thoughts exactly!” said Lindsey.

Gerard shook his head. “No. I mean, yeah, yeah, it did kind of look like they were trying to run over us, but I don’t think they were. They seemed—this is gonna sound super weird, but they seemed kind of familiar. And not just in the usual, ‘oh, I knew I was gonna see those guys’ way.”

“ _Familiar_?” asked Ray. “Are these guys people we _know_?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard said with a shrug. “I don’t know. That’s just how it felt to me.”

The doorbell clanged again, and four men and a woman, all vaguely familiar, tramped in. One of them, tall and skinny with bright purple pants and an airbrushed jacket, grinned hugely at Mikey and Gerard. “Alien kids!” he said. “We’re supposed to tell you—the FBI guys chasing you? We’re pretty sure they’re aliens, too.”

There was a long silence, before Lindsey said, “Wait a minute, who the fuck are you?”

“Cobra Starship, bounty hunters extraordinaire,” said the woman, sounding rather long-suffering. “Gabe Saporta, Nate Novarro, Alex Suarez, Ryland Blackinton, and I’m Victoria Asher. Pleased to meet you. Again.”

“Oh, right!” Ray exclaimed, remembering where he knew them from. “You were with Pete Wentz and his assistant guy on Wolf Mountain!”

“You got it,” said Suarez. “We got a call from Patrick Stump a couple of weeks ago, saying the alien hunters were sniffing around again. But we’re pretty sure the guys doing the sniffing have some extraterrestrial origins of their own.”

“Or they’re in witness protection,” added Novarro.

“Or they’re in witness protection,” Suarez parroted obediently.

Gerard snapped his fingers. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s why they felt so familiar! They had mental shields just like people have back home!”

“Are you _shitting_ me?” Bob sounded like he’d just about reached the end of his rope. “Why the hell are other Amaltheans trying to run over you with a car?”

“They might be Imperialists,” said Mikey. Ray jumped a little; he hadn’t even noticed Mikey standing behind him. Mikey gave him a wry look and continued, “Well, we left Amalthea to begin with because we didn’t want to be ruled by an emperor and the emperor was pissed. So maybe the emperor thought he’d follow us and get rid of the competition?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He frowned, and added, “Shit. I told Alicia that we’re illegal immigrants. If they’re psychic, they’re totally gonna see through that.”

Bob grabbed his head in his hands and groaned. “ _God_. One of these days, I’m gonna sit you kids down and teach you how to keep a secret. Lesson 1? Stop telling people you’re an alien. Of any kind!”

Ray laid a hand on his shoulder. He could feel Bob getting tense again—more than likely his wrist was going to hurt like crap tonight. It always did when Bob got stressed. “Hey,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone of voice. “Alicia’s the one who saw the guys. Mikey had to tell her something, right?”

“I guess,” said Bob, not sounding reassured. “Fuck, I hope Schechter gets here soon.”

“Hey, is that memory-erasing dude?” added Saporta. “Man, that was awesome.”

“Yeah,” Mikey said drily. “Real awesome.”

Nobody seemed to know what to say after that. Lindsey was giving Gerard an inquisitive glance, but he and Mikey were staring at the Cobras in fascination. Bob’s expression couldn’t have said _Fuck my life_ any clearer if he’d shouted it out loud. And the waitress, who had been bringing a pot of coffee over to their table to refill their mugs, looked like she was about ready to call the cops. Since no one else seemed to be offering any response, Ray said, “Thanks for the heads-up, guys. How about we take this whole thing somewhere a little more private?” To the waitress, he said, “Sorry about the commotion. I think we’re gonna head out.” He dug out his wallet and handed her a wad of cash, deliberately over-tipping.

They ended up taking the whole crew, Cobras and all, back to the RV. Bunny was pissed at the intrusion, but Dixie and Bauer could not possibly have been any happier at having new people to meet. Actually, more new people than expected, because Brian Schechter and a huge guy Ray didn’t even recognize were sitting on the unmade sofa bed.

“Uncle Brian!” Gerard practically flung himself at the man, followed by a slightly more awkward Mikey. Gerard pulled back and beamed hugely. With a sweeping gesture towards Lindsey, he said, “Uncle Brian, this is Lindsey. Lindsey, my Uncle Brian.”

“Um, hi,” said Lindsey with a hesitant little wave. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” said Brian, nodding. “I just wish it could be under better circumstances.” Turning to Bob and Ray, he said, “I understand we’ve got some FBI guys poking around the tour?” He looked at Mikey and Gerard and frowned. “Some _Amalthean_ FBI guys?”

Saporta looked crestfallen. “Man,” he said. “You really know how to steal a guy’s thunder.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll work on that whole ‘being psychic' thing in the future. Just for you.” To Bob and Ray, he said, “This Amalthean thing might make things a little trickier. I’m glad I brought back-up.” He pointed to the huge guy by his side. “This is my friend, Worm. He specializes in setting force-traps.”

“He does?” Mikey asked.

“Wait, what’s a force-trap?” Lindsey asked.

“What the hell’s all this about?” asked Suarez.

“Nice to meet you,” said Worm.

Dixie barked.

“Hey. QUIET!” shouted Bob, and everyone immediately stopped talking. Fixing Brian with a glare, he said, “Schechter. Do some explaining.”

Brian sighed. “Well. I just got here—I think you all are probably the ones who should be explaining the situation. But, okay, if these FBI guys are really Amalthean, I can tell you what I _think_ is going on.”

“Do that,” said Bob firmly. Ray nodded—if Brian had some idea as to how and why the people who’d chased Gerard and Mikey’s people from their own planet were now chasing them around Earth, Ray was all ears.

“Okay,” said Brian. “Well, the first thing you should know is that our planet, Amalthea, is the capital of a huge, galaxy-wide empire, ruled by one guy. It wasn’t always that way—we started out as a kind of representative democracy-slash-socialist society before one family, the imperial line, took over. Not everyone’s a fan of the whole ‘colonizing and subjecting other planets’ thing, so there’s been a resistance movement for just about as long as there’s been an emperor.

“Well, about, hmm, I’d say a hundred years ago, the empress at the time was overthrown by her younger brother. He had some bullshit claim about her being unfit to rule because of her health or something, but really, it was a military coup. At first, the empress pretty much just wanted to get out of prison and get her throne back. But after a while, after talking to people in prison and doing some studying, she decided the whole imperial system was inherently flawed, and she joined the resistance movement. She was a huge help—even in prison, she still had a lot of influence, which she used to smuggle supplies in and political prisoners out.

“Well, the resistance movement looks after its own, so eventually we got her out. She took on a new name and started a new family.” He gave Gerard and Mikey, who’d been listening with the air of people who’d heard the story before, a sidelong glance. “ _Your_ family, by the way. I’m actually talking about your grandma.”

“ _What_?” It was impossible to tell just who was asking the question, since about half a dozen were asking at once, including Gerard and Mikey.

“What the _hell_ , Uncle Brian?! You never told us our grandma was the _empress_!” said Gerard incredulously. “I can’t believe _she_ didn’t tell us!”

“What does that make us?” asked Mikey with a frown.

Brian narrowed his eyes irritably at them. “What do you mean, what does it make you? It doesn’t make you _anything_ , except fucking targets. You know perfectly well we don’t believe in a hereditary monarchy. What, do you guys want to go oppress hundreds of planets because of who your grandma was?”

They looked kind of shamefaced at that, and Gerard said, “Um…no.” Ray couldn’t help but think, though, that he’d have a lot more questions than that if _he’d_ found out his grandma was the empress of hundreds of alien planets.

“So, anyway,” Brian continued, “the whole imperial bloodline thing means that if someone wanted to overthrow the emperor and plant a new one on his throne, Gerard and Mikey would be pretty good options—which means the emperor is pretty much gonna want them dead. I mean, my guess is that if he’s sent agents who’ve managed to follow us this far, they’re really hoping to take down the whole Republic, but even if they can’t get all of us, they’re definitely gonna want some figureheads. A good execution does wonders to discourage rebellion.”

Jesus _fuck_. Ray didn’t think he’d felt so sick since he’d seen Viglione hold a gun to Frank’s head. Mikey looked as pale and frightened as Ray had ever seen him, and Gerard looked like he was going to puke, grabbing at Lindsey’s hand.

Bob moved closer to Mikey, putting a protective arm around his shoulder, and said, “Yeah, let’s try to avoid that.”

Brian nodded wearily. “That’s the plan, Bob.” He shot a stern look at the Cobras and said, “The fewer people who know the plan, the better. These guys can read minds. I really think you ought to leave. Go tell Stump what the deal is.”

“Don’t aliens have _phones_?” said Ryland. “We don’t have to go anywhere to tell Patrick what the deal is. We just call him up, and _wham!_ Done deal.”

“I’ve even got some disposable cells so they can’t track us,” Alex said earnestly.

Gabe’s expression could probably be called a pout—a disturbing look on a grown man. “Come on, dude,” he said. “How often do you think we get to help out with this intergalactic Star Wars shit?”

Ray could totally sympathize. He was just lucky he fell in the ‘honorary uncle’ category—there was no way that Brian was gonna do anything without him and Bob.

Brian stared at the ceiling, looking as if he were praying for patience. Well, maybe he was; Ray still didn’t have that firm a grasp on Amalthean religion. “All right,” Brian said finally. “But you do _what_ Worm and I say, _when_ we say it, no arguments.”

“No arguments, cross my heart and hope to die,” said Gabe, literally crossing himself. “So what’s the plan, boss? There are just two of these imperialist douches, right? We can totally take them.”

“Couldn’t they conceivably call the rest of the FBI?” Victoria wanted to know. “I mean, technically, they are FBI agents, right?”

“That’s one possibility,” said Brian. “What worries me, though, is that if there are two Imperial agents here, there’s probably more where that came from. Those guys have some unbelievably massive military power, and I don’t believe for a minute that they just sent two guys. If I know that army—and I do, because I used to be in it—they’ve probably got a ship in orbit somewhere in this solar system, giving them instructions.”

“Holy shit,” said Bob, looking downright alarmed. “What kind of ship?”

“The kind of ship that could do some serious damage to Earth if whoever’s commanding it thinks this planet’s harboring fugitives,” Brian said soberly. “We’ve got to find those two, pronto. They’ve obviously been close enough to Gerard to find out where the Republic is, if he didn’t have his shields up.” He turned a sharp look on Gerard. “Well? Did you feel them poking around?”

Gerard, who clearly hadn’t expected the attention to be turned on him, looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Uh. I don’t think so?” he said. “I mean, I was doing my best to keep shielded.”

“No offense, kid,” said Brian, “but your best shield isn’t that good.” He narrowed his eyes and asked, “Hey, where’s Frank?”

“He and his girlfriend Jamia are hanging out with the merch kids,” said Ray. “Jamia’s been helping out the head merch girl for Brand New, and _fuck_ , I get you—Frank and Jamia don’t have any mental shields at all. If the FBI guys find them….”

“Awesome. Just what I needed today,” Brian muttered. “We’ve got a million fucking kids coming to these shows, fucking media everywhere, and of course Frank’s told his girlfriend everything. I’m gonna fucking kill that kid.”

Worm, who’d been watching the proceedings with quiet interest, laid a hand on Brian’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Relax.” He seemed to say something telepathic, and whatever it was, it made some of the tension leak out of Brian’s face.

“God,” Bob muttered to Ray, “could this possibly blow any more?”

“No,” said Ray, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. He couldn’t help it. This was the kind of shit that happened in movies, not in his actual life. And somehow, the arrival of Brian and Worm and the Cobras like some kind of bizarre, multi-planet backup force made everything less like they were gonna get shot by a secret government agent and more like they were gonna save the Rebel Alliance from Darth Vader.

Bob stared at him. “Fuck. Ray, you’re totally excited about this, aren’t you?”

Damn. It seemed that Ray’s straight face sucked even more than he’d thought. “Maybe a little,” he said in a low voice. Maybe it was pointless, being quiet, seeing as how a third of the people in the room were psychic aliens, but Ray figured there was no point making his total disconnect from reality any more public than it needed to be.

“Goddamn,” said Bob, shaking his head. “You’re completely insane, you know that?” His voice was completely serious.

He was right, Ray thought guiltily. The fate of a whole people was hanging in the balance, and here Ray was, all psyched about it when real people, people they loved, were in danger.

“Hey.” Bob leaned in closer, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Don’t beat yourself up. I like a little insanity.”

Ray wanted pretty much nothing more than to close the distance between them, a few inches at the most, and kiss Bob. So of course, Mikey chose that moment to roll his eyes and said, “Jesus. You guys always pick the best times to get mushy.”

Damn kids.

**

“The thing is, you say you want to major in business and everyone thinks you’re like, soulless and evil. I say, if you want a better, more ethical corporate business world, changing it from the inside’s as good a way as any, right?”

Frank nodded. Jamia was so fucking smart. He and Mikey and Gerard had been fucking around with their band for years without ever really knowing how to get it off the ground. Jamia, well, she knew how to make her dreams happen.

“Fucker, you’re not even listening!” She smacked him on the shoulder. “Get off my tee-shirts, you’re getting them wrinkled.”

Frank obediently hopped off, but he objected to her first complaint. “I was totally listening!” he said. “And I was gonna say I think you’ll be the best businesswoman ever, but then you’d just say I don’t know anything about business, and I kind of don’t, so I thought I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

Jamia rolled her eyes. “Frank….” She sounded like she didn’t know whether to follow that up with _You’re a dumbass_ or _That’s actually kind of sweet_ , so Frank helped her out by kissing her. Hopefully, that tipped him over into the ‘sweet’ category.

She giggled into his mouth, which tickled, before kissing back with a vengeance. When she finally pulled away, her mouth was a little puffy and she bit her lower lip, as if to get it back down to its normal size. “Hey,” she said, more seriously, “you really think we’ll be okay out here? I mean, after Mikey’s dream and all….”

Frank sighed. He’d actually been trying not to think of it. He knew himself well enough to know that he couldn’t spend all day every day hanging out all day every day with in a hotel room or the RV without driving himself and everyone else up the wall, but he had to admit he got a little nervous sometimes when he was outside. Mikey had promised to come help out if he picked up any mental signals that Frank was in trouble, and Bob had asked the security guys to keep an eye out for the FBI dudes. Frank was pretty sure it would be impossible for the pricks to whip out their guns with all the people around, too. Still, when Mikey had a bad dream about something happening to you, it really, really wasn’t a good sign. “Probably,” he said to Jamia, trying to sound surer than he felt. “A couple of British guys in dark suits have to stand out in this crowd, right? We’ll see them coming. If security doesn’t get them first.”

“I guess,” said Jamia, looking unconvinced. “Hey, Matt!”

Frank turned around to see Matt Cortez walking their way, waving cheerily. Matt was a good guy, thought Frank—pretty much no matter what drama was going on, he could be relied on to listen to you and distract you with a beer or some crappy reality TV show he’d been following on the internet.

“What’s up?” said Matt. “Hey, you think I could grab one of these tee-shirts? I’m running out of clean clothes.”

Jamia narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have to ask Sarah. But I was gonna ask you, do you know if security’s found those creepy guys yet?”

Matt raised his eyebrows curiously. “What creepy guys?”

What creepy guys? What the hell—they’d just had a conversation about this yesterday. “Umm, the weird British guys in dark suits asking about Gerard and Mikey?” Frank prompted.

“Sorry,” said Matt with a shrug. “Not ringing a bell. Are they with the MSI crew?”

Jamia frowned. “No, they’re not with the MSI crew. You showed them where the concession stand was yesterday, remember? And then we talked about them, and it turned out they were, like, stalkers or something?”

“Huh.” Matt blinked, looking at them like he was trying to figure out if they were pulling his leg. “Seriously? I must have been drunker than I thought.”

The hair was standing up on the back of Frank’s neck, now. People didn’t just forget stuff like that, not unless someone erased their memories. Normal, human FBI guys couldn’t do that, but Amaltheans could. Maybe they’d been wrong about who was after them all along. “Huh,” he said to Matt. “That’s weird. Maybe we were talking to someone else.”

“It happens, dude,” said Matt with a smile. “There are a lot of fucking people on this tour.” Someone shouted his name from one of the buses, and he said, “Hey, speaking of people, I gotta see a man about a horse. Catch you later!”

“See you,” Jamia called before turning to Frank with a frown. “What are you talking about?” she said. “We were talking to _Matt_ yesterday. I might not be a genius, but I’m pretty sure I can remember a conversation I had less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“I know,” said Frank. “I know it was Matt. But I think those dudes erased his memories.”

Jamia squinted, looking confused. “Like with one of those flashing pens on Men in Black?”

“No, like with his mind. Amaltheans can do that sometimes.”

Her eyes grew huge. “You’re saying….” Her eyes darted from side to side, like she thought someone was listening. Hell, maybe someone was.

“Yeah,” said Frank. “We’d better go warn Bob and Ray and everyone.”

“Good thinking. Or, uh….” Her eyes were still huge, but it looked less like surprise and more like fear. She was pointing over Frank’s shoulder, and he turned to look. “Isn’t that Sarah and Mikey’s friend, Alicia?”

“Yeah.”

She moved her finger. “And don’t those guys in the suits over there look an awful lot like the guys we’ve just been talking about?”

Frank looked, and his heart sank. Sure enough, two skinny, dark-haired guys in black suits were headed in Alicia’s direction, though one was turning his head to look at Frank.

Shit, shit, shit, they had to move. Fucking Mikey and his stupid psychic dreams. “Come on,” said Frank. “Let’s go.”

They ran towards Alicia, not even worried anymore about attracting the attention of the FBI/alien guys, who’d probably already noticed them. “Hey,” said Jamia, “Sorry to sound like a freak, but we’ve got to go, _now_.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Alicia irritably. Her frown melted as she noticed the guys in suits. “Crap,” she said. “The INS guys.”

Frank was thrown by that for a second. Clearly, she hadn’t had her memory of them wiped, but why the hell did she think they were INS? Had Mikey told her that? “Um, sure,” he said. “But we really have to go, like, right this second.”

Alicia raised a sardonic eyebrow at him, her cool expression barely changing at all. Jesus, no wonder Mikey liked her. “Why?” she asked. "I don’t even know where Mikey is now, and I’m not an illegal immigrant. What are they gonna do?”

Jamia darted a nervous look in the men’s direction. “Talk later,” she said. “Move now.” She grabbed Alicia’s arm, clearly intending to run.

Suddenly, the heavy boxes of merchandise they’d been sorting scooted across the pavement, leaving behind a trail of shirts and broken jewel cases as the bottoms of the boxes ripped open. One of them knocked into Frank, pushing him down; the others moved around Alicia, Jamia, and Frank, circling them like gunslingers in a movie.

“Not so fast,” said the taller of the two men.

Alicia’s face had completely lost any semblance of cool mockery. “What the _fuck_?!” she shouted.

“ _Run_!” yelled Jamia, and Alicia didn’t seem inclined to argue, pushing her way through the boxes and running between two buses. Frank, who’d managed to pick himself off the ground, made sure Jamia was running, too, before heading in the same direction.

He wasn’t looking behind to see if the men were following, but he had the horrible suspicion that they were—after all, they’d seen the men’s telekinetic powers, they couldn’t just let them go, right? Where could the three of them run? They couldn’t make it to the RV fast enough—plus, Frank wasn’t sure if he had enough breath to yell directions to Alicia, who was leading their little pack at the moment. Maybe she knew where she was going, had some place they could hide out for a while. Frank could only hope.

“Hey,” said someone, sounding surprised. Frank, distracted, ran straight into them.

“I was just looking for you!” It was Gerard, looking frazzled and exhausted. Frank could totally relate. All this falling on the pavement was making his knees hurt like hell, and he was completely out of breath.

Jamia and Alicia stopped running for a second, turning to look. “Hey,” said Jamia, running back to Gerard and Frank and pulling them up off the ground. “Gerard, you need to hide us, now! Those FBI guys are after us, and they—do your thing, your alien thing!”

“Are you shitting me?” Gerard asked, looking alarmed.

Oh, crap, Frank thought, he could hear running footsteps. The fuckers were catching up. Why hadn’t Frank asked how Mikey’s dream had _ended_? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Alien thing?” said Alicia. “What the hell?”

“Ooh,” said a strange voice with a British accent, “an unexpected surprise—I’d hoped Miss Simmons here would lead me to an heir, but I wasn’t expecting _this_ heir, so soon.”

Frank stood up straighter. He would fucking kill these fuckers before he let them hurt Jamia or Gerard.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” Gerard muttered. “Where’s Mikey when you need him? He does this mental shield thing so much better than I do….”

Frank was about to yell at him to forget the stupid mental shield thing and bust out the telekinesis—Gerard could be fairly badass when he wanted to be. But then, suddenly, Frank had a familiar tingling feeling throughout his whole body, and then—then, he wasn’t there anymore. None of them were. They were sitting in the middle of the RV, surrounded by Bob and Mikey and Ray, and—hey, when had Uncle Brian and Worm gotten here? And who the hell were the jokers in the ‘80s clothes? They looked kind of familiar, but Frank couldn’t place them.

Mikey blinked, looking more surprised than Frank had known he could even look. “Dude,” he said. “Gerard, I didn’t know you could teleport.”

“Me neither!” said Gerard. He looked just as surprised as Mikey.

Frank was struck by an uncontrollable urge to hug Gerard, and he indulged it. Holy shit, he thought. How many people could say that their brothers spontaneously developed new super powers just to save them? Not a whole hell of a lot.

“Hmm,” said Uncle Brian, not sounding nearly as excited. “I was wondering if you were gonna be able to do that—you’re so strong in telekinesis, I actually thought it was a little weird you couldn’t teleport.” He glanced around the room, frowning, and shook his head. “Awesome, one more thing I’m gonna have to erase from everyone’s memory, and you know how I hate interfering with Earth people like that. I feel like a creep. Did I mention that you guys suck at this whole undercover thing?” Looking at Mikey, he said “Hey, Mikey, can you shield us until we’re ready to get these guys? It’ll be good practice.” Obviously, it wasn’t a suggestion.

“All right,” said Mikey with a sigh. “Sure, Uncle Brian.” He closed his eyes, scrunching up his forehead in concentration. It was weird, Frank thought. After years of watching Mikey and Gerard and everyone throw up these mental shields, he felt like he should have been able to see or feel something when they did it. But nope—nothing, except the kind of relaxed feeling you got when you felt safe. That was more a Pavlov’s dog thing than anything else, though.

Finally, Mikey opened his eyes and said, “Okay, we should be good for while.” Turning his attention to Alicia, he said, “Hey, are you okay?”

Alicia snorted. “Uh, no! No, I’m not fucking okay! The INS guys were chasing us, and then they moved some boxes without even touching them, and—and what the fuck was that, just now? Did your brother just _teleport_ us?”

Mikey winced. “Um…when I said Gerard and me were, uh, undocumented aliens, I wasn’t…exactly lying.”

Heh. So that’s why Alicia thought the bad guys were INS.

“Oh, no,” said Alicia, staring at Mikey like he’d just grown another head. “No, you’re not.”

“…Kind of.” Mikey looked profoundly uncomfortable.

Fuck. Frank was not about to deal with more freaking romantic drama over his family’s planetary origin, not when they were being chased by…who the hell knew who. “Okay,” he said. “Gerard and Mikey are aliens. Now you know. More to the point, they’re _good_ aliens and now we all have _bad_ aliens after us, so let’s, you know, get some perspective on the situation.” He turned to Jamia, who was looking pale and a little faint. “Hey, are _you_ okay?”

She laughed, sounding a little shaky. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”

“Hey,” said Lindsey quietly, and what? When had Lindsey gotten here? Were she and Gerard back together? “Do we have a plan? I mean, I don’t want to sound like the bitch who threatens the safety of the planet just so she can be a rock star…but I think people are actually gonna notice if I stay here indefinitely. I have a show tonight.”

Bob and Ray exchanged glances, and Bob said, “Yeah. Us, too.”

Uncle Brian looked particularly harried, and Frank resolved to sit and do the fucking lunch ritual with him as soon as all this was over. It was boring as hell, and it meant that lunch took an hour and a half without ever making you actually full, but it always seemed to make Uncle Brian happy and relaxed. “Clearly,” he said, “we have to get this problem resolved as soon as possible.”

“I’ve got the traps,” said Worm, patting his bag. At Jamia’s curious look, he said, “We make them with psychic force—a little like Mikey’s mental shield, except shields are supposed to keep people out. These are meant to keep people in.”

“Okay,” said Jamia, nodding slowly. “I’m Jamia, by the way.”

“Worm,” said Worm with a smile. “Nice to meet you. Any friend of Frank’s is a friend of mine.”

“Brian. Likewise,” said Uncle Brian tensely. “After we catch them, we have to find out whether they’ve contacted their commanding officers or not. If they have…fuck, if they have, we’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. If they haven’t, we can erase their memories of finding us here.”

“Okay,” said Ray, nodding. “But how do we get them into the traps?”

“What do you need for any trap?” asked one of the random goofily-dressed people who were, for some reason, hanging around. “Bait.”

Bob, Ray, and Uncle Brian all frowned at the same time. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Frank was tempted to giggle. “We’re not using any of the kids,” said Bob. His tone didn’t invite argument.

“Of course not,” said Goofy. “Yo, hear me out, okay.” He turned to Uncle Brian. "You can erase memories, right?” At Brian’s nod, he said, “Okay. So, I have a pretty decent idea where you all have your little alien compound. Why don’t you erase that part, the part where I remember that mountain, and leave the rest, so I can be the bait or whatever? Oh, and make me remember that you made me forget, so the bad guys are all, ‘oh, he must have stumbled onto their secret!’ But don’t make me remember that I’m bait, because they’re psychic, right?”

One of the other ‘80s people, a really pretty woman with brown hair and freckles, scowled at Goofy. “Gabe,” she said, “that’s pretty much the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, hold up,” said Uncle Brian, scratching his chin. “So, you go out there, knowing that we’re all in this camper, but not where the Republic is. They grab you to find us. But how would we activate the trap, if you don’t even remember you’re the bait? I could follow you, I guess, I’m not sure how good these guys are at breaking shields, and I don’t want to take any chances.”

Worm raised a hand. “I have an idea. I could rig up a switch, like a panic button, on these traps. You don’t know they’re traps, but you know to push the button if you’re in trouble. I could program the traps to let you out, but not them.”

Uncle Brian frowned into space, like he was working out all the possible ways it could go wrong. Finally, he said. “I’m not sure I like it, but it...might actually work.”

Gabe crowed in triumph, while the woman pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

“Are you sure you’d be okay with me erasing your memories? I mean, I could put them back later, but messing with people’s minds like that isn’t something I like to do as a general rule.”

“It’s like in _Superman_ ,” Mikey said randomly.

“Dude,” said Gabe, “I suggested it, right?”

The shortest of the goofy ‘80s people set his chin determinedly and said, “Well, if you’re gonna do it to Gabe, you might as well do it to me, too, so I can back him up.”

“Fuck you, Nate,” said one of the taller guys. “If Gabe goes, we’re all going.”

“Fair enough,” said Uncle Brian, nodding. “Can you remember to draw them into a secluded space? I’d just as soon not wipe the memories of half the people on this tour.”

“Understandable,” Gabe said. “I’m pretty sure my crew can handle that.” He draped his arms around a couple of the shorter guys and beamed. “Fuck, we’re the best, man.”

Uncle Brian looked vaguely skeptical, but he said, “Uh-huh. Okay, I think we actually have a plan, here.”

Jamia reached out for Frank’s hand and squeezed. “Let’s just hope it works,” she murmured. Frank nodded in fervent agreement.

**

Bob grimaced. “This had better fucking work,” he said. He knew he’d said that, oh, a million times, and everyone was probably getting ready to kill him, but he couldn’t help it. It had been bad enough when their lives and the boys’ had been the only ones at risk—now, from what Bob said, it sounded like the whole _planet_ was at risk.

Ray shot him a reassuring but vaguely exasperated look. “It’ll work,” he said. “Come on. What could go wrong?”

Bob could only stare at him. “Are you kidding me? Are you _trying_ to jinx us?”

“What does ‘jinx’ mean?” Both Bob and Ray turned to look at Worm, who shrugged. “What? I’m pretty good at English, but these idioms are hard.”

“It means, like, curse,” said Mikey. “Like, you say that nothing bad is going to happen, and because you said it, something bad happens.”

“Oh,” said Worm. “Well, I don’t think you have to worry about a jinx in this case. Gabe and the Cobras just activated the traps. I believe we’ve caught our Imperial friends.”

“What!” Bob straightened up, exhilarated. “Seriously? Let’s go get them.”

“Don’t sweat it,” said Brian. He looked at Gerard. “Give me a hand, Gee?”

Gerard nodded, and the two of them held hands and closed their eyes while Lindsey, who was holding Gerard’s other hand, looked on in fascination. Bob wondered just what had changed her mind—the last time he’d seen Lindsey, she hadn’t looked at all interested in even talking about Gerard, much less helping him save the planet from alien invaders.

Brian looked like he was about to pass a kidney stone for a long minute before the Cobras and two dark-suited men, standing perfectly still with their arms to their sides, appeared in the RV.

One of them made a rude noise at the sight of Brian. “Well, there’s a familiar face,” he said. “Schechter, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Brian, peering searchingly at the man. “What name do you go by these days?”

“Jarvis Cocker,” said the man. “You might recognize my friend here from the Imperial court. I’m told he was quite the favorite, once upon a time.”

“Fuck off,” said the other man, looking totally dispirited. Bob would have felt bad for him, except for the part where the guy was threatening his life and his partner and his kids and his planet. Yeah, on second thought, fuck him.

“Wait,” said Alex, who, along with the other Cobras, was sitting on the floor and rubbing his head, looking confused. “We were supposed to catch these guys, right?”

“Right,” said Brian. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but good job.”

“Thanks,” said Alex. “But, uh, did you all erase the part where we figured out what to _do_ with them?”

Good point. “Do you guys have some kind of prison up there on the mountain?” asked Bob.

“Not really,” said Brian in consternation. “We haven’t had enough problems that really call for one, you know?” He looked at Worm. “The original plan was to mind-wipe them, right?” Worm nodded.

“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” said Cocker quickly. “We contacted our superior an hour ago, told her we were just about to bring her a couple of imperial grandsons. She’s very clever—if we don’t follow up that last message, or show up mind-wiped, she’ll know something’s up. Can’t say what she’ll do then—I mean, one hopes she won’t invade the planet, but you never know. Commanders these days don’t take attacks on members of the Imperial Arm lightly, if you know what I mean.”

“That means don’t kill us, either,” said the other one with a sneer.

Bob shot a quick look at Mikey, who worked pretty well as a lie-detector in a pinch. He was frowning, but he didn’t say anything, so Bob guessed the guy must have been more or less telling the truth.

“Hey,” said Ray softly, leaning in close to Bob, “you don’t think…are we seriously talking _alien invasion_ here?” He didn’t sound even remotely excited about it—just horrified and a little disbelieving.

“I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Bob whispered back. And he didn’t. They’d work something out here and now. Somehow.

Brian fixed the FBI alien guys with a sharp look. “Well, I don’t suppose you’ve got any suggestions, then?” he said, smiling tensely. “We’re not letting you go with knowledge of our settlement, and we’re sure as fuck not letting you take my nephews back so their great-uncle can execute them after some trumped-up show trial.”

The guy who wasn’t Cocker darted a look at Gerard and Mikey, who were staring back with a kind of frightened interest. When the man’s gaze swept around to Bob, Bob glared at him. Seriously, fuck him. As if their little family hadn’t had to go through enough shit.

“Couldn’t you just say you couldn’t find us?” Gerard ventured. “Honest to God, we’re totally not interested in taking over the empire or anything.”

Cocker glanced at his companion. “D’you think she’d buy it?”

“You must be joking,” said the man. He looked at Brian and said, “You’ve been in the Imperial Arm. You don’t get very far in it if you can’t tell when someone’s lying, can you?”

“Not as a general rule, no.” Brian shot an inquisitive glance at Worm, who nodded. Probably a telepathy thing; Bob wondered what they were saying. “We’re gonna have to come up with something, though,” Brian continued. “I’m gonna be honest with you guys—we’ve got pretty much nothing by way of weapons, or at least, nothing that’s gonna make a dent against a fleet of the Imperial Arm. We’ve got no intention of launching an attack on you. But believe you me, if it comes down to it, we will find a fucking way to hit you, because I will be _damned_ if this planet gets subjugated to the Empire on my watch.”

“Well, Schechter, we’re at a bit of an impasse, then,” said Cocker, “because the only way I can think of to get Earth out of the crosshairs is to convince the man in charge that it’s not harboring traitors to the throne, and the only way to do that is wipe out your merry little band of rebels.” He shrugged, a weird, tight shrug with his arms still stuck to his sides as if glued there. “Like I said. Stalemate.”

Bob kind of wanted to punch Cocker in the face, or just grab him and his goofy little partner there and shake them, maybe yell, “You better come up with something better than that, motherfuckers!” But what good would that do? Bob had never thought he’d be nostalgic for the days when he and Ray had been running from the guys with guns in Ray’s old RV, but hell, then they’d had a pretty clear goal—get the kids to Wolf Mountain, and the aliens would take it from there.

Now...the whole fucking world was at stake, and Bob didn’t have a clue what to do. Maybe there wasn’t even anything he _could_ do.

“Hey,” said Mikey, and Bob turned to look. Mikey and Gerard were on opposite sides of the camper, Gerard on the sofa bed next to Lindsey and Mikey leaning on the wall in the kitchen, but they’d still managed to meet each other’s eyes over the crowd crammed in the RV. Their expressions were serious in a way that Bob hadn’t seen in six years.

They seemed to decide something after a moment, and Gerard said hesitantly, “Um. I don’t know if this’ll even help, but…would the Emperor settle for Mikey and me? I mean, we’re the heirs, right? We’re like his rivals, so you think if we went with you, he’d leave Earth and everyone alone?”

Oh, _fuck_ no, maybe Bob couldn’t do much, but he could sure as fuck stop this disaster-in-the-making.

“I’m not super thrilled about the idea either, Bob,” said Mikey morosely, giving Bob a glum look. “But we’re just two guys. I think the, like, six billion people on planet Earth kind of outweigh us, you know?”

Cocker laughed, and everyone turned to look at him, surprised. He snorted, grinning wryly at Mikey. “You’re not terribly clever, are you? Once he has you two, he’s already _got_ the rest of your little Rebel Alliance, and if he can’t take them without attracting attention, which I’m pretty sure he can’t, he’ll take the planet. A for effort, though.”

“You sure it’d be that easy for him to get the rest of the Republic if he had us?” asked Mikey, his chin set stubbornly. “We’ve got some pretty good mental shields, man.”

“D’you think an Emperor can manage to take over and control hundreds of planets if he can’t tell who’s lying to him and who’s not?” asked Cocker, raising an eyebrow sardonically. “You’d have to have the universe’s strongest mental shields even to try.”

Mikey frowned but seemed to accept that, and Gerard sighed defeatedly. Thank God.

The other man, who’d been silently staring into space for the past few moments, suddenly turned his head to look at Cocker. “Do you think Commander Monáe would cover for us?”

“ _What_?” asked Cocker, dumbfounded. The two of them seemed to have a quick telepathic conversation—not quick enough for Bob’s tastes, but it was only a moment later that Cocker said dubiously, “Well, I suppose it’s worth a try.”

“What? What’s worth a try?” asked Ray eagerly.

“Our superior officer,” said the man Bob was starting to think of as “Eyeliner,” because he was wearing a lot of it. “She’s pretty ambitious, and completely loyal to the Empire as far as I can tell, but….” He gave another of those weird, confined shrugs. “We’ve known each other for a long time now. Perhaps we can persuade her it’s not worth the effort.”

Seemed like a hell of a gamble to Bob, seeing as how he didn’t even know this officer they reported to, and he didn’t trust Cocker and Eyeliner as far as he could throw them.

Brian seemed similarly skeptical. “Right,” he said. “And you’d do this…why?”

“To save our own skins?” Cocker suggested.

“Well, yes, that,” said Eyeliner. “And...to be perfectly honest, I’m quite sick of this job.”

Bob didn’t think he’d ever seen Schechter look so disconcerted. “You what now?”

“Read my mind, you’ll know it’s the truth.” He turned to Cocker and said, “You’ve been saying it for years, Jarvis—your mental shields aren’t nearly as good as you think they are. And you’re right. Why the fuck would we want to go back to Amalthea for another term of service in the Imperial Arm? We’ve got no jobs, no families, no fucking _lives_ there.”

Cocker looked at his companion with amazement. “Fuck, Brian,” he said. “This is probably the most I’ve ever liked you. _Ever_.” He looked at Brian—er, Schechter. Damn, that was confusing. “He’s right, you know,” said Cocker. “I mean, home is—well, it’s where the heart is, isn’t it? But truth is, I rather like Earth. I like the food, I like the clothes, I like the music. Plus, I haven’t given a toss for the Emperor since he sent me on this fucking career-killer of a mission just because I made a little joke about him. Honestly, the man’s such a paranoid cock, it’s amazing he’s got any advisers left alive. Sorry, Brian, I know you’ve got a thing for him.”

“I haven’t anymore,” said the other Brian. “To be honest, I’d just as soon forget about him. I wasn’t joking about the pop song business—I honestly think I’d be quite good at this whole Earth music scene.”

What the hell was it with these aliens and their musical aspirations? Not that these jokers had anything in common with Gerard and Mikey besides their species and their desire to make it in the music business, but still, it was a little odd, thought Bob.

“You’re shitting me,” said Schecter, who still looked like someone had whacked him upside the head with a two-by-four.

“Not really,” said Other Brian. “God, it feels good to get this sort of thing out, you know? It’s been fifteen fucking years of trying to be loyal to an Emperor who’d just as soon kill me for failing at an impossible fucking mission. I’m quite tired of it.”

The Cobras, who’d been more or less quiet, began to mutter amongst themselves before Gabe stood up, looking incredulously at Other Brian. “What the fuck, dude?” he said. “Our whole _planet’s_ getting invaded by an army of psychic dickweeds, and you think we wanna hear you get all emo at us?”

“The man has a point,” said Cocker. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let us out of your little force bubbles so we could contact Monáe, would you?”

Brian exchanged a glance with Worm before saying sternly, “If either of you tries anything….”

“For fuck’s sake,” said Other Brian, “we know when we’re outnumbered. Do you want us to give this a go or don’t you?’

“All right,” said Worm, sounding calm enough. He closed his eyes for a moment, humming under his breath. Bob didn’t feel anything change, but _something_ clearly had, because Cocker and Other Brian started to move their arms around, like they were testing them out.

“Jesus,” said Cocker. “I’d forgotten what a pain in the ass those things are.” He swung his arms around in front of him, clasping his hands and stretching. “We brought a few ourselves, for hunting you, but they broke. Ah, the irony. The hunters becoming the hunted, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Uh-huh,” Brian said flatly.

Cocker dropped his hands to his sides. “Not impatient or anything, are you?” He dug around in his pocket, finally pulling out a little rectangular thing that looked a little like an iPod. Wrapping his fingers around it, he closed his eyes, his mouth tightening with concentration.

Brian, still looking pretty unimpressed, said, “I hope you don’t think you’ll be conducting this discussion with her in your head. Project it. Out loud, so our human friends can hear it.”

Cocker opened his eyes a crack at that. “Christ, Schechter,” he said. “I don’t remember you being this obnoxious back in the day.” But when he closed his eyes again, the little rectangle started shooting light like a slide projector against the wall of the Bounder.

A young black woman in a gray, vaguely shimmery tunic appeared on the wall. God, was this the commanding officer? She didn’t look much older than a kid herself—Bob realized that the Amaltheans aged more slowly than humans, but shit, this woman looked like a college kid. Her voice when she said, “Cocker. Molko. I sense you have something to report to me,” though, was cool and confident and (Bob thought) a little amused—the voice of someone used to being in charge.

“Mmm. Yeah, a bit.” said Cocker.

Molko sighed. “We’ve got a bit of a situation, Commander. As you can see, we’ve found some of the rebels, but, well. They seem have captured us, rather than the other way around.”

“And yet they’re allowing you to communicate with me,” said Monáe. “Very understanding captors.”

“Well. Er.” Molko shifted from foot to foot, looking less like an alien invader-slash-FBI agent-slash-aspiring musician than a kid trying to come up with a convincing excuse for why he didn’t have his homework. “We’re all hoping we can come to some sort of understanding. You see, we’re pretty sure the people here aren’t in any position to threaten the Emperor, and, well. Over the years, we’ve come to feel quite at home here on Earth, and we’d like to avoid—any unpleasantness.”

“And by ‘unpleasantness,’ you mean the armed invasion of the planet? The type of thing the Imperial Arm, by definition, exists to do—defending and expanding the Empire?”

Molko winced, and so did Bob, as Ray gripped his hand painfully tightly. Bob couldn’t blame him. His heart felt frozen in his chest. No surprise, really, given that the fate of the world was kind of hanging in the balance, here, and things didn’t look good.

Monáe tapped at her teeth with one slender finger. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully.

 _Good God, lady_ , Bob thought. _Come on. Give us a fucking break. Our planet never did anything to you._

Her eyes met Bob’s for a moment, and he thought maybe she’d heard him. But then her eyes swept back around to Molko and Cocker. “An understanding, you said.”

“That’s what we’re going for, yeah,” said Cocker, any semblance of sarcasm or casualness gone.

“Well,” she said, “let me explain things to you, as I understand them. I have just received incontrovertible proof that, despite reports of a rebel ship headed for this galaxy just after the uprising, the traitors are actually in Artarthra, hiding on one of the many uninhabited planets.”

Wait, was she saying what Bob thought she was saying?

“You two,” she continued, raising an eyebrow at Cocker and Molko, “have of course resigned your commissions in the Arm out of embarrassment for your terrible failure, and I have sentenced you to exile here. The inhabitants of this planet, while interesting from an anthropological perspective, present no opportunity for colonization in my opinion, and the Empire’s resources would be better spent elsewhere. I have no doubt that the Emperor will act on my recommendations.” She turned and gave Schechter a small smile. “Long live the Council,” she said, her tone a lot graver than her expression. She reached up to push a button or something, and the image vanished.

The whole room, alien and human, stood in stunned silence for a long moment. Finally, Nate said what Bob figured everyone was thinking: “ _What_?”

“Well,” said Cocker. “I…certainly wasn’t expecting that. Not complaining, mind, but Jesus, I honestly thought we’d have to offer her our heads on a platter or something.”

“What’s the Council?” asked Bob. It didn’t mean much to him, but it certainly seemed to have surprised Brian and Worm.

Brian brought his hand up to cover his mouth, scratching at his face before pressing his hands together, tangling and untangling his fingers anxiously. “The Council was…well, back before the Emperor took over, a long, long time ago, we elected the Council, and they were in charge of everything. Nowadays…it’s like a password for resistance fighters.”

Molko gave Brian a sharp, disbelieving look. “Monáe’s in the Resistance?” he asked. “ _Monáe_?” Bob didn’t know why he sounded so incredulous—after all, the woman had pretty much just said she was going to lie to the Emperor on their behalf.

“I guess so,” said Brian, sounding a little disbelieving himself.

“God,” Cocker said. “I knew the woman’s shields were good, but fuck, they must be _incredible_ if she’s managed to keep that under her hat for so long.” He shook his head. “You think you know someone….”

“Glad to see the next generation’s carrying on in our absence,” said Worm cheerfully.

“So, wait, does that mean we’re good? Earth, I mean?” Ray’s voice was shaky, but his enthusiasm was back, and Bob felt a rush of gratitude so fierce it made him dizzy. They were good. With all the horrible things that could have happened—with all the things they could have lost—they were all still here, still alive, and as far as Bob could tell, they weren’t in any imminent danger of alien attack. And Ray was standing beside him, sounding excited instead of scared, and life was so fucking good.

If ever there was a time that called for making out with one’s boyfriend, this was that time. Bob leaned in, digging his fingers into Ray’s hair, and kissed him hard and hot and with as much gratitude as he could actually put into a kiss.

Ray pulled away after what felt like hours but was probably only a minute or so. He leaned his forehead on Bob’s and said breathlessly, “So, everything’s good then.”

“Everything’s great,” said Bob, his heart swelling painfully in his chest. “Everything’s fucking excellent.”

“What the _hell_?” came a voice from the corner. Bob and Ray pulled apart to look towards the kitchen, where Alicia was standing, her face red and her eyes huge. “So. Anyone want to explain all this to me? Anyone at all?!”

Mikey blinked, looking at Brian.

Brian sighed. “At this point, I guess secrecy’s pretty much a lost cause.” He sat down next to Gerard and Lindsey on the bed, and said, “Let’s start at the beginning.”

Bob had heard pretty much all of it before, but he didn’t have the energy or the heart for impatience right now. He was content to sit on the disgusting floor of the RV among Gerard and Mikey’s stinky socks, leaning against his sweaty partner in the midst of dark-suited aliens and blindingly-dressed bounty hunters and confused teenagers, just listening to Brian talk.

Fuck. Life was good.

**

“Man. I can’t believe you’re going.”

Gerard looked up from sorting the “absolutely essential to my well-being” comics from the “awesome but can stay here” ones to see Lindsey, standing over him with her arms crossed and a funny expression on her face.

“Yeah,” he said. “Like, I’ve been thinking about it and having dreams and stuff about it for weeks, but now it’s like I’m actually going. Weird.” Ray was the one who’d originally suggested this art program, and Gerard had agreed without ever really thinking that he was actually going to go. Sure, Mikey and Frank had decided to stick around with Earth people for at least the next six months or so, and sure, Uncle Brian had agreed to let them, now that they had Cocker and Molko helping them rather than hunting them, but any one of them could have changed his mind before the program started. Now, though, it was really happening.

Lindsey had been really excited about the program at first—in fact, she’d been the one who’d convinced Gerard to go in the first place—but she didn’t seem too excited now. She said, “That’s awesome” like she was faking being chipper for someone she didn’t like too much.

He straightened up, pushing his piles of comics aside. “Do you…not want me to go?” he asked uncertainly. The art program _did_ seem super awesome, but spending the next six weeks working on songs with Frank and Mikey and Darren would be pretty sweet, too, and maybe it was a douchebag move to go and leave your girlfriend for a month and a half when you’d only been dating for a little over a month to begin with. Gerard had never been anyone’s boyfriend before, not like this, so he wasn’t quite sure how these things worked.

Lindsey’s face went from closed off to worried and guilty. “No, no,” she said. “Really. It’s great. You’re gonna have a great time, and when you come back, we can talk drawing techniques or whatever.” That didn’t sound like everything she wanted to say, though, so he waited until she made a face and said, “It’s just, you know, you’ve got this whole big world to explore now, and—fuck. Don’t even listen to me, I’m just being stupid. I think it’s just that I’m really going to miss you.”

“Okay,” said Gerard. “Me too. I mean, I’m not going to miss me, obviously. I’ll be with me. But I’ll miss you.” Great, he thought. Real articulate. “You know,” he added, hoping to come a little closer to what he was trying to say, “it’s not like we’re…I mean, I’ve never tried carrying on a long distance relationship, but I think I’ll be okay at it. Ray and Bob got me this cell phone, and, like, I can get pretty absent-minded, I know, but I wouldn’t forget to call you. Or you could call me. I think I can probably remember to keep my phone charged.”

Lindsey’s face relaxed into a smile, a real one. “Well, I’m pretty good at the long-distance thing,” she said. “Plus, you can teleport and shit.”

“Not over long distances,” said Gerard, but the idea of just popping up somewhere to meet Lindsey wherever she was playing was super appealing.

“Yeah, you say that now,” Lindsey said with a grin. “But you, my friend, are full of surprises.” Her expression softened, and she said, “Seriously. I’m proud of you, and I’m planning on being totally supportive here. So just remind me of that when I’m calling you up for phone sex and you have a project due or something.”

That startled a laugh out of him. Heh. Phone sex. He’d never even considered it before. But then, his life had gotten a lot bigger this summer, much bigger than he’d ever imagined back in the day when he’d thought the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to him was getting to see a movie again. Things were still weird, and a little scary, but it felt right.

The door to the RV swung open, and Mikey and Alicia trooped in. Mikey was talking animatedly about something—sounded like The Munsters, maybe—and Alicia was rolling her eyes. They both looked at Gerard and Lindsey as the door closed, and Alicia said, “Oh, hey. Still packing?”

“It’s the comics,” said Lindsey. “They present a conundrum.”

Alicia peered critically at the piles of comics, one of which had fallen over and carpeted the floor with issues of Batman. “Uh-huh,” she said. “I can see that. Hey, Mikey, are there drinks in the fridge?”

“Mm. Yeah,” said Mikey. “Coke, anyway.”

“Cool.” She squeezed Mikey’s hand before letting go of it, and then she carefully stepped around Gerard’s crap and into the kitchen.

 _Hey_ , Gerard thought in Mikey’s direction, _I thought you guys were just friends._

 _Yeah_ , Mikey said. _She’s not interested in getting into a serious relationship. Not so soon after Kyle, anyway._ Mikey seemed pretty okay with that, considering his massive crush on her.

 _Okay, but then…._

Alicia, having taken a couple of long swigs of Coke, said, “We were gonna go have lunch at this Mexican place Sarah found. You guys want to come?

“We already ate,” Lindsey answered. “Gerard has to leave in a couple of hours.”

“Right, right.” Alicia shot a look at Mikey and said, “Shit. Maybe we should go someplace closer. We’re gonna have to eat pretty fast if you want to get back fast enough to say goodbye before he leaves.”

Mikey and Gerard met each other’s eyes, and Gerard had to restrain himself from giggling. Mikey grinned. Goodbye? Like Mikey ever really went away. Even when they were physically apart, Mikey was pretty much always in the back of his mind, even more than Uncle Brian and Worm were. Still, Mikey said, “Maybe I better do it now. Just in case.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go outside and give Sarah a call. See you,” she said to Lindsey, before pecking Mikey’s cheek with a kiss and walking out the RV door.

“So….” Lindsey said.

Mikey actually flushed. “We’re just friends, okay?”

Lindsey threw her hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Mikey firmly, nodding. He turned to Gerard and said, “Hey. You gonna be all right, bro?”

Gerard didn’t know why everyone seemed to think he was just gonna spend the whole six weeks hiding in his room and moping. Seriously, he wasn’t _that_ angsty, and when he was, it was usually with good reason. “I’ll be _fine_ ,” he said.

Mikey smiled at him, amused. “Good deal,” he said. “Call us if you need anything.” And then he stepped forward to hug Gerard, burying his face in his shoulder and squeezing for all he was worth. For such a skinny guy, Mikey gave pretty intense hugs. “You’ll be awesome,” he mumbled into Gerard’s back. “And you have to call us if you come up with any more lyrics.”

“Will do,” Gerard mumbled back, suddenly feeling like maybe he was going to miss everyone more than he’d thought. Sure, Mikey’d always be there mentally, but they’d never been so far apart in the real world before. He was going to be away from everyone he knew, in a dorm full of strange people….

 _Stop worrying_ , Mikey ordered, pounding Gerard on the back before pulling away. “Call me when you get there,” he said.

“Okay,” said Gerard, wondering if he sounded as bereft as he felt.

Mikey smiled and rolled his eyes. “I told you, you’ll be great. I’ll see you around.” He waved at Lindsey and said, “See you.”

“See you,” said Lindsey, waving back. “Have fun at lunch.”

Mikey nodded, turned, and vanished through the door. Gerard could hear him and Alicia wandering off, chattering, and he felt something sharp and lonely poking at his heart.

“Hey.” Lindsey wrapped her arms around him from behind and said, “Cell phones, remember?” She pressed a kiss on the back of his neck. “Plus the whole psychic bond thing. And don’t worry. He’s got a lot of people to look out for him.”

“I know,” said Gerard with a sigh. It still hurt to say goodbye.

The rest of the afternoon was more of the same, although admittedly, none of the farewells were as hard as the one with Mikey. The rest of MSI showed up at one point to bounce on the sofa bed and critique Bob and Ray’s DVD collection. Matt dropped by to give him some magazines and to tell Ray to call him about one of the amps, which apparently they were going to have to replace. The Used came in and hung out for almost an hour, Dan making himself a sandwich while Jepha talked about The Exorcist with Lindsey and Bert and Quinn argued loudly over Gerard’s head about…something involving a party and some alcohol and a dare which apparently Quinn had chickened out of.

Saying bye to Frank was actually pretty easy, because it didn’t feel like a goodbye at all. Frank stuck his head in the door and said, “Yo, I’ve been going over these lyrics you wrote when you were all depressed and stuff, and fuck, man, this is good stuff! I like the bit about getting people to kill your enemies.”

“Um, thanks,” Gerard said.

“Hey, I’ve got this idea—when you get back, you wanna get an apartment with me and Mikey and Darren? Darren’s looking for a place now, since he’s all legally emancipated and shit, and I bet Ray and Bob don’t want us harshin’ their groove in the ol’ Bounder forever. Jarvis said he can totally help us with the paperwork. Come on, how sweet would that be?”

“Um, pretty sweet,” Gerard said, already trying to imagine how he would be home and aware often enough to keep Mikey from killing himself with a kitchen appliance. Boy, he hoped Darren didn’t mind living with a trio of slobs.

“That’s what I thought.” Frank bounded up to Gerard, hugging him tightly. “Have fun at art camp, man. Get all your creative juices flowing so you can come back and help us with these songs.” Before Gerard could even respond to that, Frank had bounded away again, yelling something about water balloons.

Lindsey laughed. “Think he’s got enough energy?”

“He’s always like that,” said Gerard with a shrug. He turned to smile at her. “This is a good place for him, I think. He’s happy here. It’s cool.” The Republic was probably a little too quiet and restrained for Frank, Gerard thought. Earth was the right place for him. It sort of remained to be seen if it was the right place for _Gerard_ , but hey, maybe he’d have a better answer to that question in six weeks.

Lindsey nodded, her expression more serious, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Yeah,” she said. Laying a hand on his shoulder, she said, “I think you’ll be happy here, too. It’s gonna be good.”

“Hey,” said Ray cheerfully, bursting through the door with arms full of groceries. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything! Hey, Gee, you just about ready to go? Bob wants to get back here before 5:00—Matt needs the car back tonight.”

“Sounds like my cue to leave,” said Lindsey. “Ray, you mind if Gerard and I take a minute in your bedroom?”

Ray’s eyes grew wide and then narrowed. “Um. A minute? You’re not gonna….”

“ _Ray!_ ” Gerard could feel himself reddening. “We’re just gonna say good-bye!” At least, he was pretty sure that was all they were going to do.

Not looking terribly appeased, Ray frowned and seemed to mull it over. “All right,” he said finally. “But just a minute. Seriously, Bob’s outside with the car.”

“Great,” Lindsey said, grabbing the sleeve of Gerard’s tee-shirt and dragging him back to the bedroom. She closed the door behind her and said, “Seriously, call me as soon as you get there. I want to hear how the dorms are in the summer—if there’s no air conditioning, lemme know, and I can send you my old dorm fan. It still works, don’t worry.”

Gerard nodded, feeling profoundly overwhelmed. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m not used to it being that hot. I mean, it gets hot on Wolf Mountain, but the higher altitudes—and I mean, apparently Amalthea’s real hot, but I don’t remember it, and—shit, Lindsey, I’m gonna suck at this. I’m totally shitty at talking to people, and is this completely douchey, like, I stay with Earth people but then I go and leave you three weeks later? And what if--”

He was going to ask what to do if it turned out that the people who ran this art program didn’t like his drawings as much as they’d thought they would, but he didn’t get a chance, because Lindsey was kissing him.

“Hey,” she said, pulling back with a no-nonsense expression. “One, you’re really not that bad with people, two, you’re _not_ gonna suck, and three, it’s not douchey at all. I know I was a little pissy earlier, but seriously, Gerard, I’m glad you’re going for this, okay? I don’t know that much about life in the Republic, but I know enough to know it’s gonna be a lot different here, and I really think it’s good that you’re starting to put a life together _here_. ‘Cause I love you, but I am _not_ interested in being your only Earth friend.”

That made sense. He’d never really thought he’d be able to do the kind of things that required living in the world instead of hiding away, but he could, now, and he’d be a moron not to go out and _do_ them. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re totally right.”

“You bet your ass I’m right,” she said with a grin. She leaned in to kiss him again, a quick peck on the lips, and added, “I know when you’re done with the program you guys are going house-hunting and stuff. But when you’re all moved in, you should come hang with me in L.A. while we record the album. You ever been to L.A.?”

“No.”

“Boy, are you in for an adventure.”

A car horn honked from outside, and Ray stuck his head in. “Hey,” he said. “You ready?”

Gerard took a deep breath. He knew and loved a lot of people at this point who’d taken whatever they had available and made really great lives for themselves. Now it was his turn. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some content notes, for the reader's information: lots of bad language, a little sexual content, and some brief and nongraphic mentions of rape and violence
> 
> Written for the 2009 Bandom Big Bang. Thanks very much to my beta, Fred; to galaxyaway for the fantastic mix [here](http://tam-cranver.livejournal.com/18770.html#cutid1) and clarityhiding for the fabulous art [here](http://tam-cranver.livejournal.com/19019.html#cutid1), and to the Bandom Big Bang mods.


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